Oliver Twist
1838
Dickens unleashes a fury of social conscience in this groundbreaking novel that follows the miraculous survival of a parish orphan through the darkest corners of Victorian England. Born in a workhouse and immediately abandoned by his mother, young Oliver Twist spends his childhood starving, beaten, and whittled down to nothing until, starving at nine years old, he commits the unpardonable sin of asking for more gruel. This single act of desperate courage casts him into a brutal apprenticeship, then onto the streets of London, where he falls into the hands of Fagin and his gang of child pickpockets. What follows is a breathless odyssey through thief-lined alleys, dark taverns, and the houses of the respectable wicked, as Oliver navigates a world where every hand is raised against him yet somehow, improbably, retains his grace. The novel unromantically portrays criminals as desperate rather than romantic, and exposes the industrial-scale cruelty inflicted upon England's orphaned children with a journalistic fury that helped change laws. Yet beneath the social critique lies one of literature's great page-turners: a story populated by unforgettable villains, impossible coincidences, and a cast of fallen angels who find redemption in unlikely places. It remains essential reading because it proves that even in a world designed to break you, stubborn goodness can endure.
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“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.””
— Charles Dickens
“It is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.””
— Charles Dickens
“My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.””
— Charles Dickens
“The sun,--the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man--burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.””
— Charles Dickens
“Please, sir, I want some more.””
— Charles Dickens
“Some people are nobody's enemies but their own, yer know.””
— Charles Dickens
“The suspense: the fearful, acute suspense: of standing idly by while the life of one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance; the racking thoughts that crowd upon the mind, and make the heart beat violently, and the breath come thick, by the force of the images they conjure up before it; the desperate anxiety to relieve the pain, or lessen the danger, which we have no power to alleviate; the sinking of soul and spirit, which the sad remembrance of our helplessness produces; what tortures can equal these; what reflections of endeavours can, in the full tide and fever of the time, allay them!””
— Charles Dickens
“Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.””
— Charles Dickens
“I know that she deserves the best and purest love the heart of man can offer," said Mrs. Maylie; "I know that the devotion and affection of her nature require no ordinary return, but one that shall be deep and lasting.””
— Charles Dickens
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Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Lex, lex-books.com/book/oliver-twist-8965bd0f-9fed-4cab-a744-1a066e86f204.Dickens, C. (1838). Oliver Twist. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/oliver-twist-8965bd0f-9fed-4cab-a744-1a066e86f204Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/oliver-twist-8965bd0f-9fed-4cab-a744-1a066e86f204.
