From the Middle Ages to Victorian era, the image of Jewish characters in English literature was mainly based on social stereotypes. Jewish characters are represented as dehumanised social creatures whose individual, personal traits border on madness and monstrosity. In that way literary fiction, together with the society creates images of the Jews which reveal processes of othering. Chaucer was the first author who used social stereotypes in creation of the villainous Jewish characters in his short story The Prioress’s Tale which was published in his collection The Canterbury Tales. The trend continued in Renaissance. Shakespeare’s character Shylock was one of the most famous Jewish villains in the world of literature. His main characteristics were avarice, slyness, greed and hatred towards Christians. His character was even included in the Nazi propaganda against the Jewish people in World War II. Marlowe’s character Barabas was the same as Shylock. Barabas’s name is important because of the connection with the Bible and the famous Jewish murderer. Victorian era brought the first positive Jewish character, Riah. His characteristics separated him from the other Jewish characters, such as altruism, sincerity and honesty. Riah is the character in the novel Our Mutual Friend, written by Dickens. The same author wrote the novel Oliver Twist. One of the main characters in the novel was Fagin. Fagin was similar to Shakespeare’s Shylock. His doings and relations with other people proved that Jewish stereotypes were actual in the Victorian era as well. A comparative reading of Chaucer’s The Prioress’s Tale and Dickens’s Oliver Twist proved that images of Jewish characters remained the same for five hundred years. The same jobs, actions and behaviour labelled Jewish characters from Middle Ages to Victorian era. Chaucer’s Jewish characters were prototypes for other Jewish characters in English literature including Dickens’s character Fagin, who is considered the most stereotypical Jewish character in the history of English literature.