Dickens wrote the line for chapter 2 of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress, where the starving nine-year-old says it to the workhouse master — and then, prompted, says it a second time. It reads exactly this way in the very first printing, the February 1837 number of Bentley’s Miscellany, and again in the 1838 first book edition (vol. I, p. 29).
“Please, sir, I want some more” Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress, chapter 2 — first printed in the February 1837 number of Bentley's Miscellany, then in book form by Richard Bentley in 1838 (vol. I, p. 29). Oliver says it twice: "Please, sir, I want some more." The popular "Please sir, can I have some more?" is a later softening.
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Provenance
The source
Work
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress
Chapter
Chapter 2, “Treats of Oliver Twist’s Growth, Education, and Board”
First printed
Bentley’s Miscellany, February 1837 number (chapters I–II, from p. 105), under the pseudonym “Boz”
First book edition
London: Richard Bentley, 1838, 3 vols. — the line is on vol. I, p. 29
He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity: “Please, sir, I want some more.” The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear. “What!” said the master at length, in a faint voice. “Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.”
Oliver Twist, chapter 2
Quoted from the modern text at Project Gutenberg ↗. The 1838 first edition reads “advancing, basin and spoon in hand, to the master” — the narration around it was lightly reworded in later editions, but Oliver’s two sentences are identical in both.
First printing. Chapters I and II of Oliver Twist open the February 1837 number of Bentley’s Miscellany, and the line already reads “Please, sir, I want some more.” there — twice — in the scanned volume 1 at the Internet Archive ↗.
First book edition. The three-volume Richard Bentley edition of 1838, published under the pseudonym “Boz,” carries the same sentence on vol. I, p. 29 ↗.
Publication history. Wikipedia records that the novel “was first published in monthly instalments, from February 1837 to April 1839, in the magazine Bentley’s Miscellany ↗,” with the book form issued in three volumes by Richard Bentley.
Oliver Twist was first published serially from February 1837 and in book form by Richard Bentley in 1838 — long before the 1931 US copyright cutoff — so the text is in the public domain in the United States. Project Gutenberg records the ebook’s status as “Public domain in the USA” ↗. Dickens wrote in English, so no translation rights are involved.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What people get wrong
The attribution here is solid — the problem is the wording. This is one of the most-quoted sentences in English fiction and one of the most reliably mangled.
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Wording“Please sir, can I have some more?” misquote
Oliver never asks a question. He states a want: “Please, sir, I want some more.” The polite request is simply how the line is remembered and repeated — Wikiquote’s page for Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver! ↗ transcribes it that way too, with no source given. We have not found a documented origin for the softening, and it is not the 1968 film: TCM titles its clip of that scene “I Want Some More” ↗. The change is tiny and it costs the scene everything: a demand becomes a request.
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SpeakerCharles Dickens, quoted as if speaking in his own voice context
Dickens wrote the sentence, but it is dialogue, not authorial statement. It is spoken by a starving workhouse boy who had drawn lots with the others for the job, in chapter 2 of the novel ↗.
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Detail“He says it once” detail
He says it twice. The master’s stunned “What!” forces a repetition — “Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.” — and it is after the second one that the ladle comes down, as printed in the 1838 first edition, vol. I, p. 29 ↗.
✓Dickens wrote it; Oliver speaks it, twice, in chapter 2 — and it has read “I want some more” since its first appearance in February 1837 ↗.
Context
Why it mattered
The scene is a set-up. Dickens spends the pages before it explaining, in mock-admiration, how the parish board decided the workhouse poor were having far too pleasant a time and put them on “three meals of thin gruel a-day.” The boys polish their bowls with their spoons until they shine; one of them, tall for his age, hints darkly that unless he gets a second basin he may some night eat the boy sleeping next to him. They cast lots for who will walk up and ask. It falls to Oliver.
So by the time the sentence arrives it is not really a request for food. It is a nine-year-old testing whether the system will admit what it is doing to him — and the answer comes back instantly: a blow from the ladle, instant confinement, and a bill pasted on the gate offering five pounds to anyone who will take Oliver Twist off the parish’s hands.
Oliver Twist has asked for more!
What happens in the next two pages
Mr. Bumble bursts in on the board “sitting in solemn conclave” to report the offence. Mr. Limbkins asks him to compose himself and confirm that the boy asked for more after eating the supper allotted by the dietary. He did, sir.
The gentleman in the white waistcoat then delivers the verdict the rest of the novel exists to disprove: “That boy will be hung. I know that boy will be hung.” Nobody in the room contradicts him.
Chapter 3 opens by calling the whole episode “the impious and profane offence of asking for more” — the joke the rest of the workhouse satire is built on.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Charles Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was, in Wikipedia’s phrase, an English writer and journalist — and the defining popular novelist of the Victorian age. Oliver Twist was his second novel, begun while The Pickwick Papers was still running, and he published it under the pen name “Boz.” Wikipedia calls it “the first Victorian novel with a child protagonist” — and Dickens used that child to put the workhouse system on trial in front of readers who had met it only in official reports.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Charles Dickens [as “Boz”], Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress, 3 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1838), 1:29. First printed in the February 1837 number of Bentley’s Miscellany, vol. 1 (chapters I–II, from p. 105).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Please, sir, I want some more’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/please-sir-i-want-some-more/