The social concerns addressed in Jack Maggs may be divided into two categories: those of the past and those of the present. This is not to suggest that the two groups are mutually exclusive, for one of the text's major concerns is the way in which the past has shaped the present.

While the nineteenth-century issues are evident to the sensitive reader, the twentiethcentury concerns are more subtly embedded within the narrative.

Carey picks up on the need for radical social reform so often encountered in the works of Charles Dickens. Carey's city of London is just as bleak, dark, and pestilent as that of his literary forebear, and the despair of the metropolis is heightened by occasional comparisons to the prosperity that Maggs has left behind him in Australia.

The state is depicted as having neglected the impoverished children it has failed to provide for...