This fiercely comic tale stands in marked contrast to its genial predecessor, "The Pickwick Papers." Set against London's seedy back street slums, "Oliver Twist" is the saga of a workhouse orphan captured and thrust into a thieves' den, where some of Dickens's most depraved villains preside: the incorrigible Artful Dodger, the murderous bully Sikes, and the terrible Fagin, that treacherous ringleader whose grinning knavery threatens to send them all to the "ghostly gallows." Yet at the heart of this drama is the orphan Oliver, whose unsullied goodness leads him at last to salvation. In 1838 the publication of "Oliver Twist" firmly established the literary eminence of young Dickens. It was, according to Edgar Johnson, "a clarion peal announcing to the world that in Charles Dickens the rejected and forgotten and misused of the world had a champion."
This book is part of a book series called Puffin Classics .
There are 352 pages in this book. This book was published 1994 by Penguin Books Ltd .
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic who is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. Kathryn and Robin Waterfield have written many books, ranging from children's fiction to ancient history. They live on a small olive farm in southern Greece.
This book contains the following story:
Oliver Twist
Orphaned Oliver spends nine years in an orphanage before being sent to a workhouse where he is bullied. Desperate to be rid of him the workhouse seek an apprenticeship and Oliver is sent to an undertakers. He falls out with his employers and runs away to London where he joins Fagin's gang of criminals, is caught and accused of pick pocketing but then rescued by kind Mr Brownlow. Unfortunately for Oliver, Fagin won't have that and recaptures him. Whilst on another job Oliver is saved a second time by Mrs Maylie. Fagin - in league with Oliver's (unknown) half brother - seeks to capture him again so his true identity cannot be revealed. But eventually he is outwitted, Oliver is reunited with Mr Brownlow and discovers his true inheritance.
