Oliver Twist

A reasonable request, it would seem, from a child fed only "three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays," but the uproar it causes propels Oliver Twist, a poor orphan caught in others' schemes, from a brief apprenticeship as an undertaker into the clutches of Fagin and his gang of criminals.

At Fagin's, Oliver meets the Artful Dodger, Bill Sikes, and Nancy, the most colorful characters in the story other than Bumble, the beadle (and a different sort of crook). Dickens repeatedly claimed that the book was meant to take the romance out of stories about criminals-"Here are no canterings on moonlit heaths, no merrymakings in the snuggest of all possible caverns...no crimson coats and ruffles, none of the dash and freedom with which 'the road' has been time out of mind invested"-but its scenes of pickpocketing, burglary, and murder stubbornly remain among the most vivid in the book.

Dicken's first true novel, Oliver Twist (1837-1839) endures as one of his most popular.

Author: Charles Dickens

Publisher: Borders

Released Date: 2007

ISBN: 9781587264863