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Oliver Twist (Barnes & Noble Classics) Paperback – October 25, 2004
Purchase options and add-ons
- New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
- Biographies of the authors
- Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
- Footnotes and endnotes
- Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
- Comments by other famous authors
- Study questions to challenge the readers viewpoints and expectations
- Bibliographies for further reading
- Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
- Print length512 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions5.19 x 1.28 x 8 inches
- PublisherBarnes & Noble Classics
- Publication dateOctober 25, 2004
- ISBN-101593082061
- ISBN-13978-1593082062
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About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Second novels separate the sheep from the goats, the possessors of enduring talent from the mere purveyors of flash-in-the-pan literary sensation. Many writers embark on a second novel with a good deal of trepidation, especially if their first book has achieved the kind of instant acclaim awarded to Charles Dickenss Pickwick Papers. If Dickens experienced any such anxiety when he set out to write Oliver Twist, he countered it with his lifelong drug of choice, a frenetic and compulsive productivity. Appearing in monthly installments, the usual mode of publication for novels until late in the nineteenth century, Oliver Twist was mostly written in tandem with other projects. When the first two chapters were published in Bentleys Miscellany in February 1837, Dickens was still writing Pickwick Papers as a serial for Chapman and Hall. With Pickwick Papers completed in November 1837, the twenty-five-year-old Dickens devoted himself to Oliver Twist for a mere four months before beginning a third novel, Nicholas Nickleby. Oliver Twist was finished and published in three volumes in November 1838, while the serial version in Bentleys still had five months to run. This frenzied pace of production was halted only once, in June 1837, when the intensity of his grief over the sudden death of his seventeen-year-old sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, forced Dickens to postpone that months installments of both Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist. Mary Hogarth is memorialized as Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist.
Where many young writers would have been tempted to stay with a winning formula, Dickenss second novel was a total departure from the timeless comedic world of Pickwick Papers. The first three installments of Oliver Twist employed ferocious satire to address a contemporary social evil, the sufferings of the poor in the new workhouses mandated by the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. Then, with the introduction of Fagin and his gang of juvenile pickpockets in the fourth installment, Dickenss readers found themselves plunged into Londons criminal underworld. The novels final installment contained a gruesome murder, a manhunt, and a hanging. While a few readers, such as the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, were shocked by Dickenss turn to such sordid subject matter, many more, including nineteen-year-old Queen Victoria, were enthralled. Oliver Twist was every bit as popular as Pickwick Papers. Three dramatizations played in London theaters during the winter of 1838-1839. Perfectly complemented by George Cruikshanks quirky illustrations, the novel was in a third edition by 1841, and even spawned an imitation, Thomas Prests Oliver Twiss. It remained a bestseller through Dickenss lifetime and beyond. The penny edition of 1871 sold 150,000 copies in three weeks. During the last decade of his life, Dickens toured England, Ireland, and America, giving public readings of favorite sections from his novels. "Sikes and Nancy," based on chapter XLVII of Oliver Twist, was a particular favorite of both author and audience. While Dickenss rendition of Nancys brutal murder sent audiences into fits of screaming and fainting, a physician waited backstage to monitor the ailing authors pulse rate. Dickenss friend and biographer John Forster speculated that the energy and fervor with which Dickens threw himself into these performances may have contributed to his early death from heart disease in 1870.
Oliver Twist remains one of the best known and most popular of Dickenss novels. Translated, adapted, dramatized, filmed (most notably by David Lean in 1948), and even turned into a musical, the story of Little Orphan Oliver and his grotesque tormentors has passed into popular culture. Millions of people who have never opened the nineteenth-century novel are familiar with the image of a ragged child holding out his porringer and asking for more. Like Robinson Crusoe or Huck Finn, Oliver has evolved from fiction into fable and archetype. Or perhaps he has simply returned to his roots. The characters and settings of Oliver Twist resonate so deeply and so variously because they echo a diverse collection of popular genres. The novel is at once social satire, thriller, melodrama, autobiography, fairy tale, moral fable, and religious allegory. While some of the specific texts that influenced Oliver Twists composition are no longer familiar to contemporary readers and may require some literary excavation, each of the various genres whose competing voices create the novels seductive energy survive and are easily recognizable in modern forms of entertainment.
Like its predecessor, Pickwick Papers, Dickenss second novel reflects his childhood passion for the eighteenth-century picaresque novels Tom Jones and Roderick Random. As in the novels by Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett, the plot of Oliver Twist revolves around illegitimacy and disputed inheritance. Like his literary forebears, Oliver is unaware of his true identity and adrift in a world of rogues and schemers. Unlike the more robust heroes of Fielding and Smollett, however, Dickenss orphan does not grow up; he remains a frail and passive child throughout the novel, more victim than protagonist. Olivers failure to reach adolescence preserves him from the sexual temptations that befall Tom Jones and Roderick Random, perhaps making it easier for Dickens to persuade his Victorian audience that "little Oliver" embodies "the purest good."
Product details
- Publisher : Barnes & Noble Classics; First Thus edition (October 25, 2004)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 512 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1593082061
- ISBN-13 : 978-1593082062
- Reading age : 7 - 11 years, from customers
- Item Weight : 15.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.19 x 1.28 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,076,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #59,125 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
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Charles Dickens was born in 1812 near Portsmouth where his father was a clerk in the navy pay office. The family moved to London in 1823, but their fortunes were severely impaired. Dickens was sent to work in a blacking-warehouse when his father was imprisoned for debt. Both experiences deeply affected the future novelist. In 1833 he began contributing stories to newspapers and magazines, and in 1836 started the serial publication of Pickwick Papers. Thereafter, Dickens published his major novels over the course of the next twenty years, from Nicholas Nickleby to Little Dorrit. He also edited the journals Household Words and All the Year Round. Dickens died in June 1870.
Mary Sebag-Montefiore is a best-selling children's author, whose re-tellings of classics have been published all over the world. She is the author of over 25 books and has adapted everything from Dickens to 'War and Peace'. She has also published articles on children's books academically and in the national press, and for adults, is the author of 'Women Writers of Children's Classics'. Her most recent title is 'Forgotten Fairy Tales of Kindness and Courage', published by Usborne Publishing.
“Mary Sebag-Montefiore’s retellings…are perhaps the best – well-written and dramatic”
The Telegraph
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Warning: SPOILERS!!!!
The story is one of a poor orphan boy, sold to an undertaker and abused until he runs away to London. He falls in with thieves and through a strange twist of fate is rescued by the man who was his father's best friend. It's a long story, filled with reversals of fortune and amazing coincidences, and although it has a happy ending, there is some genuine tragedy. It's a very sad scene when Oliver returns to the orphanage to get his best friend, Dick, who saw him off on his journey to London, only to find that Dick has died of untreated sickness. The prostitute, Nancy, has all the attributes of a character in a Greek tragedy-you desperately want her to leave the streets and her brutal boyfriend, Bill Sikes, and when she refuses to go, you have a sinking feeling that she isn't going to last much longer. When he beats her to death in their little room, it's a gruesome scene, but not a surprising one. The only relief from Fagin's gang comes from Charley, who reforms and leaves London to become a grazier.
A word about Fagin-some might find the constant description of him as "the Jew" offensive. It is not meant as a pejorative, but rather as a handy label to define the arch-criminal. While it is true that Fagin is constantly described as a Jew and is one of the most repulsive Jewish characters in literature, it was not Dickens' intent to cast slurs upon Jewish people. He wrote in good faith and was troubled later, after becoming friends with Eliza Davis, the wife of the Jewish banker he sold his London house to, by the way he had portrayed Fagin. Eliza wrote to him in 1863 that she considered the way Dickens had portrayed Fagin a great wrong to the Jewish people. Dickens started to revise Oliver Twist, removing over 180 instances of the word "Jew" from the first edition text. He also ommitted sterotypical caricature from his public readings of Oliver Twist and a contemporary report noted, "There is no nasal intonation; a bent back but no shoulder-shrug: the conventional attributes are omitted." Dickens was finally able to write to Eliza, "There is nothing but good will left between me and a People for whom I have a real regard and to whom I would not willfully have given an offence." Fagin might still give offense to those looking for it, but personally I have always seen him as an example of a bad man, not a Jewish man, and I believe that is how Dickens meant to portray him.
In terms of content, Oliver Twist is one of Dickens' most accessible novels. Hard Times and The Pickwick Papers might be weightier tomes and A Christmas Carol might be a better start for younger readers, but Oliver Twist is simply classic. On the surface engaging story with vivid characters that draws you in to the streets of London, Dickens uses his plucky little hero to paint a lurid portrait of the underbelly of society and the abject misery of living in poverty. By following Oliver through his meager workhouse existence and onward to life as a street urchin and budding criminal, we can see through the author's eyes his take on the cruel truths of child labor and the pitiful lives of the unwanted.
If my admittedly dry assessment of the underlying theme depresses you, please do realize that the Dickensian dark humor and wit are very much at play in this novel. He gets his points across with sometimes heavy-handed sarcasm and characters that may seem more like caricatures in their absurdity. Oliver Twist remains an entertaining read, one that lends itself easily to popular culture and a number of film adaptations.
Oliver Twist, obviously a well-known title, needs little introduction. But what is striking is how Dickens’ tale is several things at once. It has a fairy tale quality to it, with some dark elements thrown in as well (i.e., there is a pretty brutal murder scene and another bizarre death scene). It is also a “rags to riches” sort of tale (with “rich” not being necessarily in the monetary form). Likewise, It is also a coming-of-age children’s novel with Dickens’ sentimentality. Moreover, the novel also forms a social commentary and criticism about the conditions taking place in Dickens’ time.
Upon my second reading, I thought it was a very entertaining and enchanting story, something Dickens seems to always pull off. Dickens captures eloquently the spirit of a young orphan boy who tries to overcome the many setbacks, heartbreaks, harsh elements, and trials that are thrown at him in his young life. Through the story’s narrative, Oliver meets many types of people, friends and foes, virtuous and malevolent, and must navigate his way in the world.
Oliver Twist has many of the Dickens’ staples that make a worthy and heartfelt tale and a classic. One of the definitive characters I love about reading a Dickens novel is the cliffhanger type endings in chapters, revealing something interesting at the end of the chapter to pique the reader’s anticipation of what is to come. As per usual with Dickens, there are a bevy of eccentric and interesting characters (some infamously so).
It’s not surprising that the popularity of this novel has spawned countless adaptations in various forms, from film, stage plays, musicals, etc. Definitely a novel for Dickens or classic literature aficionados to read.