Oliver Twist: Original and Unabridged

This edition contains the original and unabridged text of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

Oliver Twist, the second novel by Charles Dickens, is about an orphan who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse before he is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Naïvely unaware of their unlawful activities, Oliver is led to the lair of their elderly criminal trainer Fagin.

Oliver Twist is notable for Dickens's unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives. The book exposed the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London during the Dickensian era. An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public’s attention to various contemporary evils, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of his time by surrounding the novel’s serious themes with sarcasm and dark humour. It is likely that Dickens’s own early youth as a child labourer contributed to the story’s development.