“The artful Dodger.”

“The Artful Dodger” is the nickname of Jack Dawkins, a teenage pickpocket and member of Fagin’s gang in Charles Dickens’s novel *Oliver Twist*. The epithet is introduced early in the story when Oliver, newly arrived in London, is taken up by the streetwise boy who initiates him into the criminal underworld. Dickens wrote *Oliver Twist* during 1837–1839 amid intense public debate about poverty, the New Poor Law, and urban crime; the character’s jaunty nickname encapsulates the novel’s blend of social critique and vivid, often darkly comic, portraiture of London’s marginalized youth.

As a standalone phrase, “the Artful Dodger” functions less as a maxim than as a character-label that has become proverbial. “Artful” suggests cleverness, performance, and practiced deception; “Dodger” implies evasiveness and agility—someone who slips away from danger, responsibility, or the law. In *Oliver Twist*, the nickname captures Jack Dawkins’s charisma and survival skills while also pointing to the moral corrosion produced by deprivation and exploitation. In later usage, the term often generalizes to any charming, slippery operator—someone adept at avoiding consequences through wit, misdirection, or opportunism.

“The Artful Dodger” (capitalization varies); “the artful Dodger” (common in running text); “Artful Dodger” (without the definite article).