 "The Fairchild Family" continued to be a bestseller despite the increasingly popular Wordsworthian image of childhood innocence and the sentimental picture of childhood presented in novels such as Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist" (1837–39).One scholar has suggested that it "influenced Dickens's depictions of Pip's fears of the convict, the gibbet, and 'the horrible young man' at the close of Chapter 1" in "Great Expectations" (1860–61).Children's literature scholar Gillian Avery has argued that "The Fairchild Family" was "as much a part of English childhood as "Alice" was later to become."