Novel
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens · 1838
Opening lines
Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse […]
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
A child is born in the workhouse of a town the narrator does not name; his mother, picked up in the street the day before, dies without anyone knowing where she came from. Raised in a branch establishment of the parish, he returns to the workhouse at nine; his starving companions draw lots for who will ask for more, and it is he who stands up. The board offers five pounds to whoever will take him. Apprenticed to an undertaker, beaten, he runs away and walks seven days towards London. At Barnet, a boy of his own age, filthy but with the manners of a man, promises him lodging with an old gentleman.
Context
The story began as the sequel to a sketch given to the first issue of a monthly magazine that its author edited. It appeared in twenty-four instalments between February 1837 and April 1839, except June and October 1837 and September 1838, with one steel engraving per month. The three-volume book appeared in November 1838, five months before the end of the serial: it could therefore be bought complete while it was still appearing. It attacks head-on the Poor Law of 1834, which had just established the workhouse system.
Who it is for
A long serial novel with many twists, originally illustrated by George Cruikshank.
Prizes and reception
Completed in volume form before the magazine had published its final instalment, it was translated into French as early as 1841, under the title Olivier Twist.
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