About this book
Oliver Twist, published in 1838, became one of English writer Charles
Dickens's better-known stories and was the first Victorian novel with a child protagonist.
Oliver Twist (Parish Boy's Progress) focuses on orphan Oliver Twist, born in a workhouse and sold into an apprenticeship with an undertaker. After escaping, Oliver travels to London, where he meets the "Artful Dodger", a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by an elderly criminal Fagin. The book shows an unromantic portrayal of criminals and the treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century.
Summary
Thanks to its colorful cast of characters and gritty portrayal of street life in Victorian London, Dickens’ Oliver Twist has captured readers’ hearts for more than 150 years. Today’s children will love it too. Oliver, a poor orphan, escapes the miserable workhouse where he was born only to fall into the clutches of a band of pickpockets led by the odious Fagin. Yet no amount of cruelty can destroy his purity…and through his goodness, he finds salvation.
From the publisher
Dickens's classic morality tale of a starving orphan caught between opposing forces of good and evil is a powerful indictment of Victorian England's Poor Laws. Oliver begins life in the workhouse, graduates to the criminal underworld of London and learns to survive.
First line
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, it boasts of one which is 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 take upon 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.
First Edition Identification
Oliver Twist was first published as a serial from 1837 to 1839 and released as a three-volume book in 1838 before the serialization ended.
The first edition was published by Richard Bentley in London, 1838. Octavo, three volumes, original reddish-brown cloth, gilt titles to the spine, front and rear panels marked with a stamp. Features 24 illustrated plates by George Cruikshank.
The first issue has the "Fireside" plate in volume 3 and "Boz" listed as the author on all title pages. It was issued on November 9, 1838. At Dicken's insistence, the Fireside plate was replaced with the "Church" plate, and Dickens's name replaced "Boz". The book was then reissued in three volumes 7 days after the first issue, on November 16.
The First US Edition of Oliver Twist was published in New York by Jemima M. Lewer in 1838, as two volumes, bound in modern brown quarter-leather bindings, with marbled paper boards.
Details
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Title
Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics)
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Author
Dickens, Charles; Fairclough, Peter; Wilson, Angus
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Binding
Paperback
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Edition
Reprint
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Pages
496
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Language
EN
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Publisher
Penguin Classics, London
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Date
November 30, 1966
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ISBN
9780140430172
