Oliver Twist (with an Introduction by Edwin Percy Whipple)

By Charles Dickens

Originally serialized in “Bentley’s Miscellany” between February 1837 and April 1839, “Oliver Twist,” is Charles Dickens’s second novel, the classic story of the struggles of a young orphan in 19th century England. When his mother dies in childbirth, Oliver Twist finds himself in a situation of dire poverty. At the time, those who could not afford to provide for themselves were often forced into servitude under the harsh Poor Laws of 19th century England. At the age of nine, Oliver is set to work picking and weaving oakum at the workhouse where he lives. The circumstances of Oliver’s life are brutal, with meager food, clothing, and shelter, he finds himself in an unenviable position. “Oliver Twist,” is an early example of social criticism, in which Dickens effectively draws attention to the political issues of child labor and the struggles of the poor. Drawing upon his own experiences as an impoverished youth, Dickens brought to light the struggles of the lower classes in a way that continues to resonate with audiences until this day. This edition includes an introduction by Edwin Percy Whipple.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781420953176

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic. Regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, Dickens had a prolific collection of works including fifteen novels, five novellas, and hundreds of short stories and articles. The term “cliffhanger endings” was created because of his practice of ending his serial short stories with drama and suspense. Dickens’ political and social beliefs heavily shaped his literary work. He argued against capitalist beliefs, and advocated for children’s rights, education, and other social reforms. Dickens advocacy for such causes is apparent in his empathetic portrayal of lower classes in his famous works, such as The Christmas Carol and Hard Times.

Book preview

cover.jpg

OLIVER TWIST

By CHARLES DICKENS

Introduction by

EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE

Oliver Twist

By Charles Dickens

Introduction by Edwin Percy Whipple

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5316-9

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5317-6

This edition copyright © 2016. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: A detail of an illustration by Charles Dudley Tennant which originally appeared in Oliver Twist: Told to Children by Ethel Lindsay, published by S. W. Partridge & Co. Ltd., London, 1922.

Please visit www.digireads.com

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter I.

Chapter II.

Chapter III.

Chapter IV.

Chapter V.

Chapter VI.

Chapter VII.

Chapter VIII.

Chapter IX.

Chapter X.

Chapter XI.

Chapter XII.

Chapter XIII.

Chapter XIV.

Chapter XV.

Chapter XVI.

Chapter XVII.

Chapter XVIII.

Chapter XIX.

Chapter XX.

Chapter XXI.

Chapter XXII.

Chapter XXIII.

Chapter XXIV.

Chapter XXV.

Chapter XXVI.

Chapter XXVII.

Chapter XXVIII.

Chapter XXIX.

Chapter XXX.

Chapter XXXI.

Chapter XXXII.

Chapter XXXIII.

Chapter XXXIV.

Chapter XXXV.

Chapter XXXVI.

Chapter XXXVII.

Chapter XXXVIII.

Chapter XXXIX.

Chapter XL.

Chapter XLI.

Chapter XLII.

Chapter XLIII.

Chapter XLIV.

Chapter XLV.

Chapter XLVI.

Chapter XLVII.

Chapter XLVIII.

Chapter XLIX.

Chapter L.

Chapter LI.

Chapter LII.

Chapter LIII.

Introduction

In August, 1836, Richard Bentley, the London publisher, read the fifth number of The Pickwick Papers,—the number in which Sam Weller was first introduced,—and immediately conceived the idea of starting a new monthly magazine, of which Dickens was to be the editor, and for which Dickens was to supply a serial story. On the 22nd of the same month he succeeded in inducing Dickens to sign an agreement to undertake the editorship of the proposed magazine, and to write the story. A short time afterwards he further succeeded in tempting Dickens into an agreement to furnish him two more serial stories, the first of which was to be written at a specified early date; the expressed remuneration in each case, says John Forster, the friend and biographer of Dickens, being certainly quite inadequate to the claims of any writer of marked popularity. The magazine, Bentley’s Miscellany, was started on the first of January, 1837; and in the February number Dickens began to narrate for it The Adventures of Oliver Twist.

The impression derived from Forster’s biography of Dickens is that the latter was self-sold into bondage by his agreement with Bentley; that there was something wrong in holding him to the strict terms of the compact. The plain fact is that Bentley, as a business man, was singularly astute in his early judgment of the capacities of Dickens’s genius. He was far ahead of all the literary critics of the time in foreseeing the enormous popularity of the man who, in the fifth number of Pickwick, had simply brought into his somewhat disconnected story the character of Sam Weller, and had introduced him merely as a bootblack in a country inn, and as a racy commentator on the peculiarities of certain shoes and boots he cleaned. Chapman and Hall were paying the author, at this period, only fifteen guineas a number for Pickwick, though they were willing, some time before it was concluded, to offer nearly ten times as much for each number of Nickleby. Bentley was therefore in the position of a capitalist who drives a good bargain with the discoverer of an undeveloped gold mine, or with the inventor of an unrecognized labor-doing machine. He palpably speculated on the possibilities of Dickens’s genius, which he first clearly discerned, and not on its actual products at the time his contracts with him were made. In all business arrangements, not literary, the compact between the parties is considered binding in equity as well as law; but in his compact with Bentley, Dickens, as soon as the conditions were changed, assumed a hysterical tone of complaint and objurgation. It was his good fortune, only a very few months after his engagements with Bentley were signed, to become the most popular author of his time. All publishers were ravenous to engage him at any price. In our opinion he should have practiced an austere economy,—written for Bentley what he had engaged to write for him before he had become not only famous but the rage,—and then, in the books he afterwards wrote, should have made as severe bargains with the trade as Bentley had made with him. As a merchant of his literary wares, Dickens was, after his engagement with Bentley was broken, a most relentless man of business, exacting from publishers a full share of the profits of his works. If booksellers drink their wine out of the skulls of authors, Dickens was ever anxious that the wine quaffed from his skull should be the thinnest of all varieties of vin ordinaire. No seller of Lake Shore or Michigan Central complains that the buyer, a few months after the sale, reaps a profit of ten or twenty percent, owing to a sudden change in the rate charged by those corporations for freight and passengers; but Dickens seems to have had a vague notion that a legal contract was not absolutely binding on him, when events which he bad not foreseen proved that the other party to the contract was making a great deal of money while he was making comparatively little. In January, 1839, while chafing under the conditions of his agreement with Bentley, he wrote a letter to him, enclosed in one to John Forster, proposing to break the compact. I know, wrote Dickens to Forster, "you will endeavor to persuade me from sending it. Go it must. It is no fiction to Bay that I cannot write this tale [Barnaby Rudge]. The immense profits which ‘Oliver’ has realized to its publisher, and is still realizing; the paltry, wretched, miserable sum it brought to me; the recollection of this, and the consciousness that I have the slavery and the drudgery of another work on the same journeyman-terms; the consciousness that my books are enriching everybody connected with them but myself, and that I, with such a popularity as I have acquired, am struggling in old toils, and wasting my energies in the very height and freshness of my fame, and the best part of my life, to fill the pockets of others, while for those who are nearest and dearest to me I can realize little more than a genteel subsistence: all this puts me out of heart and spirits. And I cannot—cannot and will not—under such circumstances, that keep me down with an iron hand, distress myself by beginning this tale [Barnaby Rudge] until I have had time to breathe; and until the intervention of summer, and some cheerful days in the country, shall have restored me to a more genial and composed state of feeling. . . . I do most solemnly declare that morally, before God and man, I hold myself released from such hard bargains as these, after I have done so much for those who drove them. The net that has been wound about me so chafes me, so exasperates and irritates my mind, that to break it at whatever cost—that I should care nothing for—is my constant impulse. Bentley seems to have behaved with a magnanimity uncommon in publishers. He consented to the rupture of the agreement, released Dickens from his contract to write another tale, and made over to him in June, 1840, the copyright of Oliver Twist, and such printed stock as remained of the edition then on hand, for the sum of £2250. It is plain that he might have made double or triple this amount by insisting on his legal claims. Dickens’s irritation in respect to the original agreement breaks out as early as the fourteenth chapter of the book itself. Mr. Brownlow asked Oliver if he should not like to be a book-writer. After a little consideration, Oliver replied that he thought it would be a much better thing to be a bookseller. Mr. Brownlow laughed, and said, Don’t be afraid! We won’t make an author of you, while there’s an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to."

Oliver Twist was the first of Dickens’s romances which was subjected to the revision of his dear friend and biographer, John Forster, an accomplished man of letters, recently deceased. Forster read and suggested corrections to everything which Dickens afterwards wrote, and the text of Oliver Twist may be supposed to have specially engaged his critical sagacity, as it was the first story on which it was exercised. Yet the text of Oliver Twist is left in a slovenly condition, discreditable to both author and reviser. The reader needs to go no further than the opening paragraph to understand what we mean. The frequent use of the colon for the comma in the punctuation of the narrative is particularly exasperating.

The plot of Oliver Twist is both improbable and melodramatic. It turns on the attempt of Monks, the regular scowling, mysterious, and stereotyped villain of the melodrama, to murder Oliver, his illegitimate younger brother, through the process of having him converted into a thief by Fagin, it being understood that a path will thus be opened for him to the gallows. Iago’s statement of his motives for hating Othello may be, in Coleridge’s phrase, the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity; but Monks is no Iago. A low, sneaking, and essentially cowardly rascal, he could hardly, on any reasonable view of his character, have devoted so much time, which might have been spent in profligacy, in hunting down the son of his mother’s rival, especially as the will in that son’s favor had been destroyed. An uneasy sense, therefore, that Oliver had been swindled out of his own by a crime was, with his hereditary hate, the only inspiration of Monks in conspiring with such a treacherous rogue as Fagin for the purpose of demoralizing his brother and eventually getting him hanged or transported. Such a character is possible, but it is not, for the purposes of romance, artistically probable. Yet few readers lose any interest in The Adventures of Oliver Twist through their perception of the clumsiness and improbability of the plot; for in this romance Dickens exhibited not merely his humor, but his command over the sources of pity and terror.

The pathos of the earlier chapters is brought out all the more effectively by its constant association with humor. There is something in the forlorn position of the boy, starved, beaten, helpless, and seemingly hopeless, which beseechingly appeals to the hearts of mothers; and by obtaining possession, thus early in his career, of the hearts of mothers, Dickens secured an audience among the real rulers of families, and permanently domesticated himself at thousands of firesides. His own sufferings as a boy gave him an intimate acquaintance with the feelings of childhood and youth, of boyhood and girlhood; and by idealizing these in forms of character which had a plaintive reality to the mind, he gave to all his romances one element, at least, of constant interest. In little Oliver he availed himself of the usual privilege of dramatists and novelists, that of taking an exceptionally good character and placing him in exceptionally bad circumstances. Indeed, it requires much faith to believe that so delicately constituted a boy as Oliver could physically survive the beadle’s thick stick and thin gruel; much more, perhaps, that he should preserve his refinement of feeling, his piety, and his keen sense of right, amid his vulgarizing and brutalizing surroundings; but the sympathies of the reader are so strongly addressed that he sees little incongruity in making the drudge of a workhouse, and the companion of thieves, talk and act like the good boys in do-me-good Sunday-school books. The pathos of the situation is indeed irresistible. When Oliver resists his tormentors, it is not because he has been outrageously beaten, but because the memory of his dead mother has been insulted; and when alone, after the conflict, he falls upon his knees on the floor, hides his face in his hands, and sheds such tears as, God send for the credit of our nature, few so young may ever have cause to pour out before him After he has resolved to run away he looks out into the cold, dark night, and the stars seem, to the boy’s eyes, farther from the earth than he had ever seen them before; a flash of imagination which reveals the full piteousness and desolation of his condition. He has one friend to leave, poor little consumptive Dick, his companion in misery; they had been beaten, and starved, and shut up together, many and many a time; and Oliver tells him, with an affectation of hope and cheer, that he shall see him again, well and happy. I hope so, replied the child. "After I am dead, but not before. I know the doctor must be right, Oliver, because I dream so much of heaven and angels, and kind faces, which I never see when 1 am awake. Kiss me, said the child, climbing up the low gate, and flinging his little arms around Oliver’s neck. Good-by, dear! God bless you!" Such pathos may be called mawkish, but it is a mawkishness which has power to open hearts that are shut, and melt hearts that are hard.

Among the criminal population of the book, two persons stand prominently forth: Fagin, the Jew, and Bill Sikes. Fagin’s soul is as yellow and shriveled as his face; he is wicked to the very core of his being; he so much delights in crime that he establishes a sort of academy to teach boys the rudiments of vice and villainy; he gloats and chuckles over the debasement of their bodies and the damnation of their souls; and he is connected with humanity only by the craven fear which makes him start and tremble even in his ecstasies of avarice and malignity. He belongs to the progeny of the devil by direct descent. Sikes, in speculating on his genealogical tree, bluntly tells him, There never was another man with such a face as yours, unless it was your father, and I suppose he is singeing his grizzled red beard by this time, unless you came straight from the old ’un without any father at all betwixt you; which I should n’t wonder at, a bit.

When this creature is at last caught and caged, Dickens passes into that part of his nature which, however reluctantly, we must call his soul, and, with a shudder which still does not obscure his vision, observes and records what occurs therein. The chapter entitled The Jew’s Last Night Alive is a masterpiece of psychology, as terrible as it is truthful. The condition and operations of the criminal mind under mortal fear are watched with a vigilant, unshrinking eye, and stated with minute exactness. The ghastly, deadening torpor of the Jew’s general mental mood; the feeble wanderings of his brain from one slight object to another, as he instinctively seeks relief from the thought of the doom he knows to be impending; his imbecile attempts to fasten his attention on insignificant appearances in order to keep out of view the dumb, horrible reality gnawing at his heart; and his bursts of agony when he discovers that no abasement of cowardice can save him from the death he so much dreads: all these mental facts are brought before the imagination with such vivid clearness that we seem to be witnesses of the internal states of this foul soul, which, having been damned into the world, now sees no escape from being damned out of it. Bill Sikes is a criminal of another kind, but equally well portrayed. A thoroughly hardened ruffian of the sturdy English type, with a sullen ferocity which penetrates his whole nature and allies him to his true brethren, the beasts of prey, there is no room in his breast for conscience, or pity, or physical fear; his attendant and moral shadow, the dog, has a character seemingly caught from that of his master; or perhaps we should say that Sikes the dog appears to have been arrested in that process of evolution which, when allowed free course, resulted in the production of Sikes the man. The account of the murder of Nancy is one of the most harrowing scenes in romance; and there is great power displayed in the description of Sikes’s flight afterwards, with the phantom of his victim pursuing him, the widely-staring eyes, so lustreless and glassy, meeting his at every turn. Dickens, when writing these scenes, realized them so intensely that they may be said to have taken possession of him. When he read the account of the murder of Nancy to his wife, she became so affected that he describes her as being in an unspeakable state.

There are, in Mr. Fagin’s seminary for the education of youth in theft and burglary, two promising pupils, Mr. John Dawkins (the Artful Dodger) and Master Charley Bates, who contribute much to the comedy of the book. Forster tells us that, on the evening when Dickens was writing the last chapter of the story, he and Talfourd were present at Dickens’s house. How well, he adds, I remember that evening! and our talk of what should be the fate of Charley Bates, on behalf of whom (as indeed for the Dodger, too) Talfourd had pleaded as earnestly in mitigation of judgment as ever at the bar for any client he had most respected. Although Charley Bates is ever laughing, the Dodger is by far the funnier person of the two. The comical dignity with which he wears the honors of his profession, the lofty view he takes of it as a means of livelihood, his perfect content with the position in society it gives him, and the inimitable swagger and assurance which mark his general deportment, have lifted him to a high humorous rank among the numerous astonishing juvenile scapegraces that Dickens has drawn. When arrested as a pickpocket, and put in the dock for examination, he requests to know what he was placed in that ’ere disgraceful sitivation for; points to the magistrates, and asks the jailer to communicate to him the names of them two files as was on the bench; complains that his attorney is a-breakfasting this morning with the Wice-President of the House of Commons; and, when asked if he has any question to put to the witness against him, loftily replies that he would n’t abase himself by descending to hold no conversation with him. After he is committed, he turns to the magistrates and exclaims, "Ah! it’s no use your looking frightened; I won’t show yon no mercy, not a ha’porth of it. You’ll pay for this, my fine fellers. I wouldn’t be you for something!" And as he goes off, he threatens to make a parliamentary business of it. The impudent little rascal so wins upon the humorous sympathies of the reader that many others besides Talfourd have felt like speaking a mitigating word for him to the bench.

The scenes in which Mr. Bumble, the beadle, appears, are full both of humor and of pathos,—the humor coming from the pomposity with which he executes the duties of his high office, and the pathos from the sufferings of his victims. Mr. Bumble is the impersonation of the abuses of the English parochial system in the management of the poor: a sycophant to those above him, a tyrant to those below him, mean, stupid, greedy, hypocritical, cowardly, and unfeeling; big in body as becomes his station, small in soul as becomes the doing of its business, and endowed with a colossal conceit, which serves him in the place of conscience and gives him supreme self-satisfaction and self-approval in his daily performance of acts of cruelty and injustice. But he is made by Dickens as ridiculous as he is heartless. When the half-starved Oliver rises against his tormentors, those who have beaten the boy almost to death refer the sudden exhibition of his spirit to madness. On Mrs. Sowerby’s communicating this theory to Mr. Bumble, he, after a few moments of deep meditation, replies, It’s not Madness, ma’am; it’s Meat. When a jury brings in a verdict that one of his paupers died of exposure to the cold and want of the common necessaries of life, he is naturally indignant ‘Juries,’ said Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane tightly, as was his wont when working into a passion, ‘juries is ineddicated, vulgar, groveling wretches’ He tells Mrs. Mann, who conducts a farm for the raising of pauper children, that he inwented the idea of naming the foundlings of the workhouse in alphabetical order. The last, he says, "was a S,—Swubble, I named him. This was a T,—Twist, I named him. The next one as comes will be Unwin, and the next Vilkins. I have got names ready-made to the end of the alphabet, and all the way through it again, when we come to Z. Why, you are quite a literary character, sir! said the admiring Mrs. Mann. Well, well, replied the beadle, perhaps I may be. Perhaps I may be, Mrs. Mann. When, towards the end of the book, his knavery is on the point of exposure, he cringes to the party assembled at Mr. Brownlow’s with a hypocritical sycophancy that is deliciously absurd and awkward. Do my hi’s deceive me! he exclaims, or is that little Oliver? . . . Can’t I be supposed to feel—I as brought him up porochially—when I see him a-setting here among ladies and gentlemen of the very afftablest description? I always loved that boy as if he’d been my—my—my own grandfather! . . . Master Oliver, my dear, you remember the blessed gentleman in the white waistcoat? Ah! he went to heaven last week, in a oak coffin with plated handles, Oliver." Mr. Bumble is not a father, but if it had pleased Dickens to give him a son, nobody could have filled that position more appropriately than the charity boy of the novel, Noah Claypole, the most consummate of all actual or possible sneaks.

Dickens, in his preface to Oliver Twist, replies with some heat to those refined and delicate people who had objected to his introduction of such creatures as Fagin and Sikes and Nancy into the book, as equally offensive to good morals and good taste. After justifying his selection of such persons for romantic treatment, he bluntly tells his censors that he has no respect for their opinion, does not covet their approval, and does not write for their amusement. I venture, he adds, to say this without reserve; for I am not aware of any writer in our language, having a respect for himself or held in any respect by his posterity, who has ever descended to the taste of this fastidious class. Certainly the reading of Oliver Twist can corrupt nobody. The representation of criminals is vivid and true, but what is wicked is not associated with what is alluring, and the moral tone and purpose are often inartistically obvious. The morality of the novel is not only sound, but the moral taste of the writer, his fine sense of what is becoming, prevents him from putting into the mouths of his criminal characters language which would be appropriate to them; language which Fielding and Smollett would not have hesitated to use, but which the manners of our day have banished from contemporary books. That he should have portrayed such characters in their hideous reality, and still should have denied to them their favorite outlets of expression in ribaldry and blasphemy, proves both his skill in characterization and his instinctive perception of the verbal proprieties demanded by modern taste. Dickens, however, was never on more perilous ground than in this novel; and that he escaped certain dangers inherent in its design is evident from the failure of a host of imitators, whom his success stimulated, to make their romances of rascality either morally or artistically justifiable.

EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE.

1894.

Chapter I.

Treats of the Place where Oliver Twist was Born and of the Circumstances attending his Birth

Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sorrow and trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained a matter of considerable doubt whether the child would survive to bear any name at all; in which case it is somewhat more than probable that these memoirs would never have appeared; or, if they had, that being comprised within a couple of pages, they would have possessed the inestimable merit of being the most concise and faithful specimen of biography, extant in the literature of any age or country.

Although I am not disposed to maintain that the being born in a workhouse, is in itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance that can possibly befall a human being, I do mean to say that in this particular instance, it was the best thing for Oliver Twist that could by possibility have occurred. The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration,—a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence; and for some time he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and the next: the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter. Now, if, during this brief period, Oliver had been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and indubitably have been killed in no time. There being nobody by, however, but a pauper old woman, who was rendered rather misty by an unwonted allowance of beer; and a parish surgeon who did such matters by contract; Oliver and Nature fought out the point between them. The result was, that, after a few struggles, Oliver breathed, sneezed, and proceeded to advertise to the inmates of the workhouse the fact of a new burden having been imposed upon the parish, by setting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have been expected from a male infant who had not been possessed of that very useful appendage, a voice, for a much longer space of time than three minutes and a quarter.

As Oliver gave this first proof of the free and proper action of his lungs, the patchwork coverlet which was carelessly flung over the iron bedstead, rustled; the pale face of a young woman was raised feebly from the pillow; and a faint voice imperfectly articulated the words, ‘Let me see the child, and die.’

The surgeon had been sitting with his face turned towards the fire: giving the palms of his hands a warm and a rub alternately. As the young woman spoke, he rose, and advancing to the bed’s head, said, with more kindness than might have been expected of him:

‘Oh, you must not talk about dying yet.’

‘Lor bless her dear heart, no!’ interposed the nurse, hastily depositing in her pocket a green glass bottle, the contents of which she had been tasting in a corner with evident satisfaction.

‘Lor bless her dear heart, when she has lived as long as I have, sir, and had thirteen children of her own, and all on ’em dead except two, and them in the wurkus with me, she’ll know better than to take on in that way, bless her dear heart! Think what it is to be a mother, there’s a dear young lamb do.’

Apparently this consolatory perspective of a mother’s prospects failed in producing its due effect. The patient shook her head, and stretched out her hand towards the child.

The surgeon deposited it in her arms. She imprinted her cold white lips passionately on its forehead; passed her hands over her face; gazed wildly round; shuddered; fell back—and died. They chafed her breast, hands, and temples; but the blood had stopped forever. They talked of hope and comfort. They had been strangers too long.

‘It’s all over, Mrs. Thingummy!’ said the surgeon at last.

‘Ah, poor dear, so it is!’ said the nurse, picking up the cork of the green bottle, which had fallen out on the pillow, as she stooped to take up the child. ‘Poor dear!’

‘You needn’t mind sending up to me, if the child cries, nurse,’ said the surgeon, putting on his gloves with great deliberation. ‘It’s very likely it will be troublesome. Give it a little gruel if it is.’ He put on his hat, and, pausing by the bed-side on his way to the door, added, ‘She was a good-looking girl, too; where did she come from?’

‘She was brought here last night,’ replied the old woman, ‘by the overseer’s order. She was found lying in the street. She had walked some distance, for her shoes were worn to pieces; but where she came from, or where she was going to, nobody knows.’

The surgeon leaned over the body, and raised the left hand. ‘The old story,’ he said, shaking his head: ‘no wedding-ring, I see. Ah! Good-night!’

The medical gentleman walked away to dinner; and the nurse, having once more applied herself to the green bottle, sat down on a low chair before the fire, and proceeded to dress the infant.

What an excellent example of the power of dress, young Oliver Twist was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned him his proper station in society. But now that he was enveloped in the old calico robes which had grown yellow in the same service, he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once—a parish child—the orphan of a workhouse—the humble, half-starved drudge—to be cuffed and buffeted through the world—despised by all, and pitied by none.

Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of church-wardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder.

Chapter II.

Treats of Oliver Twist’s Growth, Education, and Board

For the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities. The parish authorities inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities, whether there was no female then domiciled in ‘the house’ who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist, the consolation and nourishment of which he stood in need. The workhouse authorities replied with humility, that there was not. Upon this, the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved, that Oliver should be ‘farmed,’ or, in other words, that he should be dispatched to a branch-workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female, who received the culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week. Sevenpence-halfpenny’s worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence-halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher.

Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher who had a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who demonstrated it so well, that he had got his own horse down to a straw a day, and would unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited and rampacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not died, four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable bait of air. Unfortunately for, the experimental philosophy of the female to whose protecting care Oliver Twist was delivered over, a similar result usually attended the operation of her system; for at the very moment when the child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers it had never known in this.

Occasionally, when there was some more than usually interesting inquest upon a parish child who had been overlooked in turning up a bedstead, or inadvertently scalded to death when there happened to be a washing—though the latter accident was very scarce, anything approaching to a washing being of rare occurrence in the farm—the jury would take it into their heads to ask troublesome questions, or the parishioners would rebelliously affix their signatures to a remonstrance. But these impertinences were speedily checked by the evidence of the surgeon, and the testimony of the beadle; the former of whom had always opened the body and found nothing inside (which was very probable indeed), and the latter of whom invariably swore whatever the parish wanted; which was very self-devotional. Besides, the board made periodical pilgrimages to the farm, and always sent the beadle the day before, to say they were going. The children were neat and clean to behold, when they went; and what more would the people have!

It cannot be expected that this system of farming would produce any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver Twist’s ninth birthday found him a pale thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidedly small in circumference. But nature or inheritance had implanted a good sturdy spirit in Oliver’s breast. It had had plenty of room to expand, thanks to the spare diet of the establishment; and perhaps to this circumstance may be attributed his having any ninth birth-day at all. Be this as it may, however, it was his ninth birthday; and he was keeping it in the coal-cellar with a select party of two other young gentleman, who, after participating with him in a sound thrashing, had been locked up for atrociously presuming to be hungry, when Mrs. Mann, the good lady of the house, was unexpectedly startled by the apparition of Mr. Bumble, the beadle, striving to undo the wicket of the garden-gate.

‘Goodness gracious! Is that you, Mr. Bumble, sir?’ said Mrs. Mann, thrusting her head out of the window in well-affected ecstasies of joy. ‘(Susan, take Oliver and them two brats upstairs, and wash ’em directly.)—My heart alive! Mr. Bumble, how glad I am to see you, sure-ly!’

Now, Mr. Bumble was a fat man, and a choleric; so, instead of responding to this open-hearted salutation in a kindred spirit, he gave the little wicket a tremendous shake, and then bestowed upon it a kick which could have emanated from no leg but a beadle’s.

‘Lor, only think,’ said Mrs. Mann, running out,—for the three boys had been removed by this time,—‘only think of that! That I should have forgotten that the gate was bolted on the inside, on account of them dear children! Walk in sir; walk in, pray, Mr. Bumble, do, sir.’

Although this invitation was accompanied with a curtsey that might have softened the heart of a church-warden, it by no means mollified the beadle.

‘Do you think this respectful or proper conduct, Mrs. Mann,’ inquired Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane, ‘to keep the parish officers a waiting at your garden-gate, when they come here upon porochial business with the porochial orphans? Are you aweer, Mrs. Mann, that you are, as I may say, a porochial delegate, and a stipendiary?’

‘I’m sure Mr. Bumble, that I was only a telling one or two of the dear children as is so fond of you, that it was you a coming,’ replied Mrs. Mann with great humility.

Mr. Bumble had a great idea of his oratorical powers and his importance. He had displayed the one, and vindicated the other. He relaxed.

‘Well, well, Mrs. Mann,’ he replied in a calmer tone; ‘it may be as you say; it may be. Lead the way in, Mrs. Mann, for I come on business, and have something to say.’

Mrs. Mann ushered the beadle into a small parlour with a brick floor; placed a seat for him; and officiously deposited his cocked hat and cane on the table before him. Mr. Bumble wiped from his forehead the perspiration which his walk had engendered, glanced complacently at the cocked hat, and smiled. Yes, he smiled. Beadles are but men: and Mr. Bumble smiled.

‘Now don’t you be offended at what I’m a going to say,’ observed Mrs. Mann, with captivating sweetness. ‘You’ve had a long walk, you know, or I wouldn’t mention it. Now, will you take a little drop of somethink, Mr. Bumble?’

‘Not a drop. Nor a drop,’ said Mr. Bumble, waving his right hand in a dignified, but placid manner.

‘I think you will,’ said Mrs. Mann, who had noticed the tone of the refusal, and the gesture that had accompanied it. ‘Just a leetle drop, with a little cold water, and a lump of sugar.’

Mr. Bumble coughed.

‘Now, just a leetle drop,’ said Mrs. Mann persuasively.

‘What is it?’ inquired the beadle.

‘Why, it’s what I’m obliged to keep a little of in the house, to put into the blessed infants’ Daffy, when they ain’t well, Mr. Bumble,’ replied Mrs. Mann as she opened a corner cupboard, and took down a bottle and glass. ‘It’s gin. I’ll not deceive you, Mr. B. It’s gin.’

‘Do you give the children Daffy, Mrs. Mann?’ inquired Bumble, following with his eyes the interesting process of mixing.

‘Ah, bless ’em, that I do, dear as it is,’ replied the nurse. ‘I couldn’t see ’em suffer before my very eyes, you know sir.’

‘No’; said Mr. Bumble approvingly; ‘no, you could not. You are a humane woman, Mrs. Mann.’ (Here she set down the glass.) ‘I shall take a early opportunity of mentioning it to the board, Mrs. Mann.’ (He drew it towards him.) ‘You feel as a mother, Mrs. Mann.’ (He stirred the gin-and-water.) ‘I—I drink your health with cheerfulness, Mrs. Mann’; and he swallowed half of it.

‘And now about business,’ said the beadle, taking out a leathern pocket-book. ‘The child that was half-baptized Oliver Twist, is nine year old to-day.’

‘Bless him!’ interposed Mrs. Mann, inflaming her left eye with the corner of her apron.

‘And notwithstanding a offered reward of ten pound, which was afterwards increased to twenty pound. Notwithstanding the most superlative, and, I may say, supernat’ral exertions on the part of this parish,’ said Bumble, ‘we have never been able to discover who is his father, or what was his mother’s settlement, name, or con—dition.’

Mrs. Mann raised her hands in astonishment; but added, after a moment’s reflection, ‘How comes he to have any name at all, then?’

The beadle drew himself up with great pride, and said, ‘I inwented it.’

‘You, Mr. Bumble!’

‘I, Mrs. Mann. We name our fondlings in alphabetical order. The last was a S,—Swubble, I named him. This was a T,—Twist, I named him. The next one comes will be Unwin, and the next Vilkins. I have got names ready made to the end of the alphabet, and all the way through it again, when we come to Z.’

‘Why, you’re quite a literary character, sir!’ said Mrs. Mann.

‘Well, well,’ said the beadle, evidently gratified with the compliment; ‘perhaps I may be. Perhaps I may be, Mrs. Mann.’ He finished the gin-and-water, and added, ‘Oliver being now too old to remain here, the board have determined to have him back into the house. I have come out myself to take him there. So let me see him at once.’

‘I’ll fetch him directly,’ said Mrs. Mann, leaving the room for that purpose. Oliver, having had by this time as much of the outer coat of dirt which encrusted his face and hands, removed, as could be scrubbed off in one washing, was led into the room by his benevolent protectress.

‘Make a bow to the gentleman, Oliver,’ said Mrs. Mann.

Oliver made a bow, which was divided between the beadle on the chair, and the cocked hat on the table.

‘Will you go along with me, Oliver?’ said Mr. Bumble, in a majestic voice.

Oliver was about to say that he would go along with anybody with great readiness, when, glancing upward, he caught sight of Mrs. Mann, who had got behind the beadle’s chair, and was shaking her fist at him with a furious countenance. He took the hint at once, for the fist had been too often impressed upon his body not to be deeply impressed upon his recollection.

‘Will she go with me?’ inquired poor Oliver.

‘No, she can’t,’ replied Mr. Bumble. ‘But she’ll come and see you sometimes.’

This was no very great consolation to the child. Young as he was, however, he had sense enough to make a feint of feeling great regret at going away. It was no very difficult matter for the boy to call tears into his eyes. Hunger and recent ill-usage are great assistants if you want to cry; and Oliver cried very naturally indeed. Mrs. Mann gave him a thousand embraces, and what Oliver wanted a great deal more, a piece of bread and butter, less he should seem too hungry when he got to the workhouse. With the slice of bread in his hand, and the little brown-cloth parish cap on his head, Oliver was then led away by Mr. Bumble from the wretched home where one kind word or look had never lighted the gloom of his infant years. And yet he burst into an agony of childish grief, as the cottage-gate closed after him. Wretched as were the little companions in misery he was leaving behind, they were the only friends he had ever known; and a sense of his loneliness in the great wide world, sank into the child’s heart for the first time.

Mr. Bumble walked on with long strides; little Oliver, firmly grasping his gold-laced cuff, trotted beside him, inquiring at the end of every quarter of a mile whether they were ‘nearly there.’ To these interrogations Mr. Bumble returned very brief and snappish replies; for the temporary blandness which gin-and-water awakens in some bosoms had by this time evaporated; and he was once again a beadle.

Oliver had not been within the walls of the workhouse a quarter of an hour, and had scarcely completed the demolition of a second slice of bread, when Mr. Bumble, who had handed him over to the care of an old woman, returned; and, telling him it was a board night, informed him that the board had said he was to appear before it forthwith.

Not having a very clearly defined notion of what a live board was, Oliver was rather astounded by this intelligence, and was not quite certain whether he ought to laugh or cry. He had no time to think about the matter, however; for Mr. Bumble gave him a tap on the head, with his cane, to wake him up: and another on the back to make him lively: and bidding him to follow, conducted him into a large white-washed room, where eight or ten fat gentlemen were sitting round a table. At the top of the table, seated in an arm-chair rather higher than the rest, was a particularly fat gentleman with a very round, red face.

‘Bow to the board,’ said Bumble. Oliver brushed away two or three tears that were lingering in his eyes; and seeing no board but the table, fortunately bowed to that.

‘What’s your name, boy?’ said the gentleman in the high chair.

Oliver was frightened at the sight of so many gentlemen, which made him tremble: and the beadle gave him another tap behind, which made him cry. These two causes made him answer in a very low and hesitating voice; whereupon a gentleman in a white waistcoat said he was a fool. Which was a capital way of raising his spirits, and putting him quite at his ease.

‘Boy,’ said the gentleman in the high chair, ‘listen to me. You know you’re an orphan, I suppose?’

‘What’s that, sir?’ inquired poor Oliver.

‘The boy is a fool—I thought he was,’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.

‘Hush!’ said the gentleman who had spoken first. ‘You know you’ve got no father or mother, and that you were brought up by the parish, don’t you?’

‘Yes, sir,’ replied Oliver, weeping bitterly.

‘What are you crying for?’ inquired the gentleman in the white waistcoat. And to be sure it was very extraordinary. What could the boy be crying for?

‘I hope you say your prayers every night,’ said another gentleman in a gruff voice; ‘and pray for the people who feed you, and take care of you—like a Christian.’

‘Yes, sir,’ stammered the boy. The gentleman who spoke last was unconsciously right. It would have been very like a Christian, and a marvellously good Christian too, if Oliver had prayed for the people who fed and took care of him. But he hadn’t, because nobody had taught him.

‘Well! You have come here to be educated, and taught a useful trade,’ said the red-faced gentleman in the high chair.

‘So you’ll begin to pick oakum to-morrow morning at six o’clock,’ added the surly one in the white waistcoat.

For the combination of both these blessings in the one simple process of picking oakum, Oliver bowed low by the direction of the beadle, and was then hurried away to a large ward; where, on a rough, hard bed, he sobbed himself to sleep. What a novel illustration of the tender laws of England! They let the paupers go to sleep!

Poor Oliver! He little thought, as he lay sleeping in happy unconsciousness of all around him, that the board had that very day arrived at a decision which would exercise the most material influence over all his future fortunes. But they had. And this was it:

The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered—the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work. ‘Oho!’ said the board, looking very knowing; ‘we are the fellows to set this to rights; we’ll stop it all, in no time.’ So, they established the rule,

Reviews for Oliver Twist (with an Introduction by Edwin Percy Whipple)

[velvetsnape · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great classic.

[jntjesussaves · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Writing: 5.0; Theme: 5.0; Content: 4.5; Language: 4.5; Overall: 5.0; This was a wonderful volume that shares the rough, yet heart-warming story of Oliver Twist. Oliver travels through life battling the evils of this world while growing up in the poor conditions of a street youth. This story resembles the process that many Christians go through. As Christians, like Oliver, we are persecuted in this life, but in the end those who were the persecuted will one day receive glorious rewards if they live their lives pleasing to Christ. Great tome! Highly recommend. ***March 5, 2019*** (read with Jonathan)

[quaintlittlehead · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I heard it said somewhere once that a first novel is always the author's most personal. Not so with Dickens, who had to let his thoughts churn over the concept behind "Oliver Twist" while experimenting with the earlier "Sketches by Boz" and "Pickwick Papers." It can definitely be said, though, that "Oliver Twist" is the first novel that Dickens gets right. Instead of feeling like you're reading chapters in isolation that stretch the story for the sake of getting paid for additional instalments, everything fits together beautifully. The plot is by turns tragic, comical, philosophical, romantic, and suspenseful. Dickens manages to follow different characters on their own particular arcs rather than just presenting everything through Oliver's point of view, but there are very few sections that feel like they are dragging the reader away from the main story. The message reflects the developing sensibilities of the new Victorian era while addressing concerns about poverty, morality, and charity that remain relevant to this day. In spite of its time period, however, it shows progressive tendencies, most notably in the excellent characterisation of Nancy, a vast improvement over all the simpering and fainting women of "Pickwick Papers." And while the story is very likely familiar from a number of different adaptations, I found that the author was still able to pull me out of the cynicism of saying "yes, I know what's going to happen" and to surprise me, both in terms of plot details and style. This is a book that stands in conversation with the author's later works and with the other great works of literature that take on the moral questions of their time. It has, as Calvino said, never finished saying what it has to say.

[boredness-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There were certain points in the story where I found it hard to follow what was going on. I found the ending especially confusing. But other than that, I enjoyed the story. I plan on watching a couple movie renditions to see if I can better understand what was going on.

[pjulian-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Language was awesome. The story was not connected enough and the point that the author intended to place, that morality in not class dependent was not fulfilled.

[alcracka · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

First of all, Oliver Twist is a hateful book. Dickens has created in Fagin an embodiment of bigotry; a leering, black-nailed, money-grubbing Jew who's nearly always referred to as The Jew, as though Dickens wasn't sure we'd get it.* Fagin is the most memorable character in Oliver Twist, and he's inexcusable. I've read me some Victorian novels; I'm familiar with the casual anti-Semitism that's nearly unavoidable in them; I understand the context of the time. Dickens is well beyond that context. For his time, he was a hater. This is a hate crime of a book.

* To clarify my context: I'm an atheist, so I think all religions are equally imaginary, and I think prejudice against any religion is equally distasteful.

Second, Oliver Twist is a shitty book. His second, following the comedic Pickwick Papers, it shows Dickens reaching for new territory: exposing the hopelessness and injustice of destitute life in London. But it's maudlin, obvious, predictable, lame. Oliver is such a simpering bitch that it's impossible to give a shit about him. Bad people want to use him; good people want to pamper him; readers are bored. Dickens will write great books, but not yet.

To be fair, not that I want to be, in the last chapters of Oliver Twist, he's figured it out. Nancy and Sikes suddenly take over the book, although I doubt Dickens knew they would, in a denouement of terrific power; and Fagin's last scene is equally powerful. But it's way too little, way too late.

It's Banned Book Week as I write this, and I don't think Oliver Twist should be banned. I think people need to know that the most loved British writer since Shakespeare wrote this. I wouldn't assign it in a class, because it sucks, but I would make sure my students understand that Dickens is responsible for it.

It's a shitty little book. It makes me think less of Dickens. I wish he'd known better.

[anphan-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It’s a story that make everyone think about Oliver, like a brave man. He escaped from the workhouse, have a rich family that he never knew, a brother try to harm him, his mother die in workhouse, he never ‘ ew he had a family, a father or even a brother. He been with the thief, but he was benn help by a kind young and old lady at the house where he try to steal things. The thief never forgive him, they try to catch him back, they think he one of them for ever. But he met nice people who willing to help him out those thief.This is amazing story, poor Oliver

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Overheersend: humoristische en vooral sarcastische stijl. Sterke zwartwit-tekening van de karakters. Oliver is uiteraard de held, maar eerder schaapachtig; alleen in het begin aanzet tot eigen karakter, daarna drijft hij mee en evolueert zijn karakter niet (is grote zwakte van de roman)Uiteraard is er een sociale achtergrond: de achterbuurten van Londen, de schandalige Poor’s Law, de hypocrisie van de kerkelijken. Lichtelijk melodramatisch, vooral op het einde nogal melig.

[read4to4live · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

If this had been my first Dickens novel, I never would have read another. The protagonist, for the most part, is acted upon instead of acting. His great heroic moment takes place when he runs away from home and walks 70 miles to London (a moment he remembers in great excitement at the end of the book). But for the remainder of the story, he merely suffers, miserably and passively, as he is humiliated, degraded, hunted, starved, sickened, and beaten. As a reader it is too much to bear, because Oliver has no way to fight back. If he only had an internal monologue that kept him strong, mentally, that might have been enough to maintain my empathy; but when he is just a simple, blank slate of a suffering child, his misery does not make a satisfactory read. Even in the chapters of the happy ending, he sits passively as adults explain his (convoluted) history. Fair disclosure. I did not manage to finish the book. I got up to the point where Oliver has to relinquish his clean, new suit of clothes for the rags he had thought were gone forever; and I just couldn't bear his suffering anymore and had to stop. I read the rest of the plot on wikipedia; and then read the last few chapters, to decide whether the ending was brilliant enough to justify trudging through the novel. When I discovered, instead, that the ending was just long passages of exposition regarding missing members of Oliver's family, I felt satisfied with the decision not to continue. Normally, I don't post a review when I haven't finished the book; but this time I decided to go ahead just to encourage anyone who agrees with me about this book not to give up on Dickens altogether: I can recommend Hard Times and Great Expectations, and will give the remainder of the oeuvre a try.Side note: Perhaps if I had read this with my eyeballs, instead of by audiobook, I would have been able to finish it; since I could have read it very quickly. But by audiobook, you are forced to completely digest each sentence.

[auntieknickers · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I received this book from the Junior Deluxe Editions Book Club at about age 7, but wasn't able or willing to read it till I was 10 or 11. It's a while since I've read it, and having seen Oliver! a couple of times since, it's always a little hard to recall that first reading. The scenes where Oliver is a professional mourner for a funeral home always stuck in my mind. I should read it again some day. I should note that I do have the fancy Franklin Library edition too, but the Junior Deluxe is one I can't bear to part with unless someday a grandchild will want it.

[miguelnunonave · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Agree that it's not Dicken's best. Social criticism and sarcasm but it feels a bit too sloppy and naïf. Plus you get bored about the whole oh so poor little child saga, even if put against the industrial revolution's harsh realities.

[bill5bradford · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

First time all of the way through, although I have done portions of the book before. As with other recent Dicken's reading, Colledge's God and Charles Dickens was very helpful in putting this into context.The most interesting thing about Oliver Twist is that it works so well without any great character development. The good are good, the bad are bad, and there are very few who do not fall into one of these two categories. The good get rewarded, the bad (finally) get what they deserve. It very much is a morality tale - using the definition of a morality tale as one that exhibits the conflict between good and evil while offering moral lessons. And it excels in this category.This e-book was originally released in serial format, to match how the book was originally released. That gave me a greater appreciation of how the book was originally experienced.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It's hard not to like Dickens. He creates these eccentric supporting characters that are quirky, bizarre and totally lovable. But unlike so many of his masterpieces, Oliver Twist lacks a complex hero or main character. The book begins with Oliver's birth in a poor work house. His mother dies in child birth and his father is unknown. Oliver grows up under horrible conditions forced to work and is poorly fed - and yes, that famous line that we all remember from the Broadway musical and movie, 'Please, sir, I want some more' is a line from the book! After some failed apprenticeships, Oliver escapes to London and is taken in by a group of children pick pockets, trained by Fagin. As the book progresses, Oliver gains many allies among both his band of thieves as well as some wealthy families, who coincidentally are related to Oliver's unfortunate mother. What I found lacking in this Dickens' novel is that Oliver, although a sweet and innocent child, doesn't really grow and develop the heroic personality of some of Dickens other main characters - David Copperfield, Pip from Great Expectations, or my favorite, Esther from Bleak House. Definitely Oliver Twist is still a book worth reading, but I didn't find it as strong as some of his other works.

I listened to the audio version performed by John Lee who has a deep soothing British voice. His skill at accents from the cockney dregs of London to the upper class was very well done.

[thescream-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The master has done it for me once again. I can't imagine an English reader in the 19th century not feeling downright shameful and disgusted at the existing social conditions, upon finishing this read. The events evoke such a feeling of horror and injustice that at times you can't help but feel like the impetuous Doctor Losberne, who left unchecked would be dealing out vigilante justice in spades.If I could wring the Bumbles' necks from my couch, I think I just might. Little Dick's innocent plea to leave a message for Oliver before his death is so powerful and moving, I was fighting off tears. As monstrous as Fagin and Sikes are made out to be throughout, their final demise tears at you, and almost has you begging for mercy...almost. Masterfully done!

[pilgrimjess · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Like an awful lot of people I have seen the film version of this story numerous times and even the stage version once as well but had never got around to actually reading the original. To mark Dicken's 200 birthday I felt that it was time to put things right just to see how much of the story had been altered.Dicken's was obviously a great wordsmith and this could be seen in his depiction of the conditions in the workhouse which were so vivid it was frightening but in truth I found this portion a little dull and just wanted to race through this part to get to when Oliver goes to London and meets Fagin and the gang. For it is there that the story really begins for me. Can a sweet natured boy who has had a very rough upbringing, where he was shown little affection and no little brutality, remain honest and upstanding or would he turn out a wrong 'un like the rest of them. A question of nurture or nature.The book holds some great characters who are given such a three dimensional feel by the great writing ( anyone who can get away with a character called Master Bates must be good). I did feel a little uncomfortable with Fagin constantly refered to as the Jew, although I realise that it is hard to expect the same standards of today 150+ years ago.On the whole I really enjoyed the book although it could be argued that this was not one of Dicken's best and am glad that I finally got around to reading it. Some parts I found a little slow but once it really got going I felt that the story raced along nicely. If I could have given it 4.5 stars I would have but finally came down on the side of a 4 but in the end as far as Dicken's himself is involved 'Can I have some more?'

[jerhogan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not one of Dicken's stronger novels in my opinion. The ending is pat. However its a pleasant enough light read despite the poverty portrayed.

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I am not a big fan of Dickens, and Oliver Twist did nothing to persuade me. After the first third, the story began winding here and there (it was a serial after all), and I just lost the plot, especially as more and more characters were introduced.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable book...until the end. The deus ex machina wrecked it for me. Oliver may as well have turned out to be the long lost prince of England or something. It just seems very roughly thrown together in the end.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I always loved Oliver Twist the most of the Dickens books I've read. He seemed to come to life in my head the most of all Dickens' characters.

[sly_wit · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Frankly, I thought Oliver Twist would be a bit of a chore, but instead I really looked forward to it each night (I chose to read most of the book following the original serialization breaks marked in my edition). The story is melodramatic and sentimental, and the coincidences in the plot are extremely far-fetched, but it’s a fun ride and an interesting exposure of social welfare and the criminal justice system of the time.

It’s admittedly difficult to read Dickens’ characterization of Fagin (“the Jew”) today, but there were other “bad” characters who were exceptionally drawn, such as the Bumbles or Bill Sikes, and other characters I would have liked to see more of, such as Mr. Grimwig or Jack Dawkins (who disappears unceremoniously from the narrative at a certain point). The portrayal of the relationship between Nancy and Bill Sikes is particularly strong and sadly relevant even today.

[hadriantheblind · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A bit longer than it needed to be, but still has some interesting moments. Fagin is a hilariously offensive caricature, and most of the other characters are only the latter.

[bontley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Surprisingly readable. Good satire, good humor, good story. Nice, though forced, surprises

[yelim-7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was the first book I read over the summer and I enjoyed reading this book. This book was more than a tale; it addressed and criticized the social injustice during the 19th century. This book portrayed how injustice our society was by introducing the character Oliver Twist. He was one of the victims of society as he faced social injustice just because he was an orphan and he was poor. He was often looked down by rich people and he was mistreated by his looks and backgrounds.

[stacy_chambers-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Moments in this made me cry.

[librarycin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

2.5 starsOliver Twist is an orphan and is shuffled around to various places where he is not treated kindly, when he finally has enough and runs away to London. In London, he initially meets up with a group of thieves. After a little more focus on Oliver that I don’t want to give away, a lot of the story suddenly follows other characters. I thought the first half of the book that primarily focused on Oliver was o.k. But once the story started following other characters (almost all the second half of the book), I found my mind wandering. I was not able to concentrate on what I was reading, so I kind of lost what was going on in the story.

[martensgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Having developed an aversion to Dickens having been forced to read Great Expectations at school, I was pleasantly surprised by how good this book is. Some of Dickens' characters are hilarious and he describes their idiosyncrasies beautifully!

[scarchin-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"There are two types of people in this world: Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don't."

The same applies to Charles Dickens. I like him!

[eglinton_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Finally getting to the end of these rambling Victorian sagas, it's easy to be infuriated at the ludicrous revelations and disclosures, legacies and dying wishes that tie it all benevolently up, that subdue all the vitality and humour of the characters with the saccharine promise of a bland and safe future. Because the rogues and oddities usually do make for the best scenes. But whatever the quibbles, Dickens' heartiness and sentiment wins us over. The dull worthiness and small role of the title character, Oliver, is another surprise; you could forget he's in it at times. But there's always enough that us going on: eccentric characters, evocative descriptions, memorable set-pieces. And of course the rousing versions in song and stage that come after:  "We've taken to you so strong..."

[ursula_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I admit that I've been avoiding Dickens for quite a while now. My experience with him, aside from a few illustrated, abridged children's versions, consists of two encounters: A Christmas Carol (easy and short) and Hard Times (not that easy, not as short, although shorter than most of his books). I was quite disinterested in subjecting myself to more Dickens after Hard Times - so much so that Oliver Twist was my first tentative foray into his works since 1990. Whether I've just grown up, or grown more patient, or read more 19th century novels since those days, I was pleasantly surprised to find that reading Oliver Twist was not the torturous experience I was convinced it would be.There's no point in discussing the plot, since everyone knows it. But I found Oliver himself kind of annoyingly limp and high-strung. I guess that's to be expected when you're doing a classic good vs. evil setup. Evil is just always much more interesting than good. But a surprising amount of the book doesn't really involve Oliver all that much, except as a pawn everyone else is trying to do something with. Some of the turns in the plot, I didn't see coming (no, I've never seen a movie/musical version), so that was kind of fun. Also, I enjoyed the amount of snide social commentary that Dickens worked in. The worst part was probably my frustration that after everything was over, there was still a "wrapping up" chapter to go, but I suppose that's pretty standard with this sort of book. I'll be less hesitant approaching the next Dickens book, although I wouldn't call myself an enthusiast either.Recommended for: Dickens-o-phobes, fans of melodrama and mustache-twirling.Quote: "He had a decided propensity for bullying: derived no inconsiderable pleasure from the exercise of petty cruelty; and, consequently, was (it is needless to say) a coward. This is by no means a disparagement to his character; for many official personages, who are held in high respect and admiration, are the victims of similar infirmities. The remark is made, indeed, rather in his favour than otherwise, and with a view of impressing the reader with a just sense of his qualifications for office."

[leslie398 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my favorite Dickens novels, and Simon Vance's narration does it justice :)I have read this book several times, but the last time was maybe 25 years ago. The basic plot is (I hope!) well-known but I was surprised by how much of the details I had forgotten. What I hadn't forgotten, and enjoyed just as much this time around, was Dickens mordant sarcasm