Hardcover, 398 pages
English language
Published May 14, 1992 by Reader's Digest Association.
Oliver Twist, OR: the Parish Boy's Progress, is Charles Dickens's second novel, and was first published as a serial from 1837 to 1839. The story centres on orphan Oliver Twist, born in a workhouse and sold into 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 the elderly criminal Fagin.
Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go, however hard he tries to escape.
One of the most swiftly moving and unified of Charles Dickens’s great novels, Oliver Twist is also famous for its re-creation–through the splendidly realized figures of Fagin, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and the evil Bill Sikes–of the vast London underworld …
Oliver Twist, OR: the Parish Boy's Progress, is Charles Dickens's second novel, and was first published as a serial from 1837 to 1839. The story centres on orphan Oliver Twist, born in a workhouse and sold into 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 the elderly criminal Fagin.
Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go, however hard he tries to escape.
One of the most swiftly moving and unified of Charles Dickens’s great novels, Oliver Twist is also famous for its re-creation–through the splendidly realized figures of Fagin, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and the evil Bill Sikes–of the vast London underworld of pickpockets, thieves, prostitutes, and abandoned children. Victorian critics took Dickens to task for rendering this world in such a compelling, believable way, but readers over the last 150 years have delivered an alternative judgment by making this story of the orphaned Oliver Twist one of its author’s most loved works.--Goodreads
The adventures of an orphan boy who lives in the squalid surroundings of a nineteenth century English workhouse until he becomes involved with a gang of thieves.
Very classical. I read the original English version as native German speaker...
I don't consider myself an especially sensitive person, I grew up in a Gentile neighborhood so I've heard it all forever, and I knew ahead of time about Dicken's bigotry and who Fagin was, but I was surprised to be so put off. After a while, I felt like things would be going along OK and then I would be slapped in the face. So here are two stars, don't spend them all in one place.
==================
I think I've selected the wrong edition. I read the Norton Critical Edition and the included essays are very good.
Over all, I thought this was an alright book. I will say though that I've got to be in the mood for Dickens. There was a lot of conversation in the book, and at the beginning I thought Oliver cried a whole heck of a lot. The story was pretty good though, and it did have a happy ending.
It seems a bit silly to try to write a review of a book that was published more than 150 years ago, and is so well known, but here are a few thoughts prompted by reading it.
Dickens is generally regarded as a Good Author who wrote Good Books, and so reading them must be Good For You. Even F.R. Leavis allowed Dickens into his canon.
As a result, Dickens's books are often prescribed reading for schoolkids, to do them good. But the only book by Dickens that I liked when I was at school was [b:A tale of two cities|1953|A Tale of Two Cities|Charles Dickens|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344922523s/1953.jpg|2956372]. It seemed to fit in with [b:The scarlet pimpernel|136116|The Scarlet Pimpernel|Emmuska Orczy|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1172075548s/136116.jpg|750426] and others of the same genre.
Another one we had at school was [b:Great Expectations|2623|Great Expectations|Charles Dickens|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327920219s/2623.jpg|2612809]. It was a matric set book, and our English teacher, a guy called Derrick Hudson-Reed, …
It seems a bit silly to try to write a review of a book that was published more than 150 years ago, and is so well known, but here are a few thoughts prompted by reading it.
Dickens is generally regarded as a Good Author who wrote Good Books, and so reading them must be Good For You. Even F.R. Leavis allowed Dickens into his canon.
As a result, Dickens's books are often prescribed reading for schoolkids, to do them good. But the only book by Dickens that I liked when I was at school was [b:A tale of two cities|1953|A Tale of Two Cities|Charles Dickens|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344922523s/1953.jpg|2956372]. It seemed to fit in with [b:The scarlet pimpernel|136116|The Scarlet Pimpernel|Emmuska Orczy|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1172075548s/136116.jpg|750426] and others of the same genre.
Another one we had at school was [b:Great Expectations|2623|Great Expectations|Charles Dickens|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327920219s/2623.jpg|2612809]. It was a matric set book, and our English teacher, a guy called Derrick Hudson-Reed, told us that in 20 years time we would come back to visit the school and confess to him that we had never read [b:Great Expectations|2623|Great Expectations|Charles Dickens|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327920219s/2623.jpg|2612809]. Quite a number of us told him that right after the exam. We'd read an executive summary to get the main points of the plot. Perhaps if I'd read it I'd have got an A instead of a BB in the exam, but I rather doubt it. I rather suspect that [a:Charles Dickens|239579|Charles Dickens|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1357465042p2/239579.jpg] is wasted on the young.
About every four or five years I pick up a book by Dickens and read it. I've enjoyed them, but as I've read them I've been glad that I hadn't read them when I was younger. There was so much that I just would not have appreciated.
Oliver Twist begins with scenes in a 19th-century workhouse in England. When you are at school, they explain such things in a brief footnote, or maybe the teacher would say something about it.
But reading it now, at my age, I've read quite a bit about workhouses because of my interest in family history. I know that my great great grandfather (well, one of them) died in Bodmin Union Workhouse at the age of 83. It was what passed for an old age home in those days, and if you'd spent your life as a woodman, scrounging wood from the woods, you didn't end up with much in the way of a pension. [b:Oliver Twist|18254|Oliver Twist|Charles Dickens|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327868529s/18254.jpg|3057979] not only describes life in a workhouse; it has graphic descriptions of death in a workhouse.
So I'm glad that I read it at the age of 71, rather than at the age of 11 or even 21. If I'd read it then, I'd have missed too much.
Having said that, I might not have noticed the plot holes if I'd read it earlier. There are just too many improbable coincidences, too many people fortuitously meeting too many other people who turn out to have been related, or friends of relations, or enemies of relations. I suppose that that is in part the result of its having originally been written as a serial, and having so many plot threads that Dickens had to find ways of tying together in the end.
If you haven't read it yet, you might enjoy it, especially if you are over 50.
But Dickens, in spite of having a chapter to tie up the loose ends, never does tell us what happened to the Artful Dodger.
