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Can some kind person give me a nudge to help with this (rather wordy) clue?

17a A female petty criminal in Dickens fiction changing character initially becomes an old literary lady (4,6)

I have _I_S _O_G_R

A character in Martin Chuzzlewit, changing the first letter of one in Oliver Twist in the second word

I had wondered about her, quisling, but isn't she Mrs. Todgers?

Not that one. Martin met her in America.

https://www.online-literature.com/dickens/chuzzlewit/59/

You need to go a long way down

Thank you for the link.

Quisling

Having had Dickens inflicted on me at school, I've long thought that his prose is the distressing result of paying a writer by the word - why use one word when ten would do? - and looking at the plot of Martin Chuzzlewit to try to make sense of your hint confirmed it!

Now Jane Austen, on the other hand - she could write English!

I couldn’t agree more, chrise. Austen wrote like an angel, and Dickens wrote some seriously bad stuff.

I always liked Wilde’s quote about The Old Curiosity Shop: “"One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."

Happy to help, will37. A pretty obscure answer in my book

Thanks for agreeing, quisling - I thought that might have been controversial!

I also agree withWilde.