Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics)

In addition to the excellent introduction (which I read AFTER the work itself), this edition supplies the reader with a glossary of cant (jargon) and copious notes that are well-worth the effort to read. The illustrations are all here, and lend a richness to the novel. This clearly isn't Dickens's best work, but his first true novel and a classic.

He's one of the best ever. Love the prose, love the story, and very glad I took the time to read it (finally). You should too.

This was one of the books my mom strongly encouraged me to read when I was a kid, and back then, I thought it was too gloomy and dull, yet I manged to finish it; nevertheless, after rereading it as an adult, I realized that I remember the book differently than my second read. I guess I would describe it as having more gravity now in contrast with my boyhood memory. Another thing was that I could feel how this book was constructed from a periodical series published in newspapers, and it was just this sense that each chapter was a story in itself. Charles Dickens was a very good writer from a very different time, and he isn't everyone's cup of tea, yet I still see great value in reading books like this.

Oliver Twist is a social satire that criticizes Victorian England. Some of his criticisms of society could still apply today. It was more graphic and violent than I thought it would be. Dickens writes the best characters I've ever read. Even the minor characters have personalities and flaws. Dickens has this way of narrating that makes you feel so connected to the characters and makes you care about them a lot.August Rush, the movie, was a great retelling of Oliver Twist and now that I've read the book, I can see even more similarities (the biggest similarity - he runs away from an orphanage and gets picked up by a band of musicians that reminds me a lot of the band of thieves in Oliver Twist). Oliver Twist was not really a page turner, but it was the easiest novel of Dickens that I've read yet. The ending felt a little contrived to me, but I felt so moved by all of the characters through the rest of the novel that I didn't mind very much. I can see why this novel was shocking at the time it was published. Dickens sheds light on things that people just didn't like talking about back then and nothing is black and white.

Loved it!

Once upon a time, as a child, I read "Oliver Twist" in an issue of Classic Comics. Once upon a time, as a student, I worked through a reading list of paperback Dickens novels that, for whatever reason, did not include "Oliver Twist." When I returned to this early Dickens novel, I read it on a Kindle. I am sorry it took me so long to get from the comic book to the real thing.The plot of "Oliver Twist is well known, so let me mention some other things that a grown up reader might enjoy. For one thing, the novel is an angry commentary on how a society treats its poor. The baby farms for orphans, the workhouses, and the apprentice situations have not lost their power to shock. The scene where Oliver dares to ask for more gruel is rightly famous, but there are many scenes that detail the routine near starvation of those dependent on "porochial" generosity. Along with these scenes go the overseers: the beadle, Mr. Bumble, and his estimable wife, both of whom are regularly depicted eating and drinking their fill. The fact that they are one step removed from poverty only increases their contempt for those beneath them.The London in which Oliver eventually finds himself is equally vivid, drawn from those dank nooks and corners Dickens observed as a young man as he went about his work as a reporter. He also knew well Newgate Prison, where Fagin spends his final days; Dickens had already written about it in an earlier sketch.Another aspect of the novel that is gripping is the way Dickens depicts abusive relationships between men and the women who are love them. The relationship of Bill Sikes and Nancy is the most famous, but it is paralleled by the connection between the snitch Noah Claypole and his subservient Charlotte (both of whom torment Oliver when he is apprenticed at Sowerberry the coffin-maker's). Dickens humorously reverses this dynamic when he depicts Mrs. Bumble ruling over the craven Mr. Bumble, but we understand that this is the exception, rather than the rule. Oliver's existence is, to some extent, the result of the unequal relationship between his father and his mother.The character of the diabolical Fagin induces an unease in a modern reader that Dickens's readers mostly did not feel. He is almost always called "the Jew" and is, in accordance with the stereotype, preoccupied with money. One of Dickens's biographers, Michael Slater, gives an account of a Jewish reader who wrote to Dickens to object to this.Don't miss this novel. The progress of the little parish boy, Oliver Twist, suggests that a society is only as admirable as its compassion for the least among it.M. Feldman

Received in great shape

Occasionally some words are different than the copy I’m reading from, or where a paragraph ends might be different. My fifth grade son and I take turns reading from our own copies aloud, so sometimes this causes us to stumble. Cuss words are written as d— whereas my copy would spell it out. I like that feature, but some may not so I thought I’d share.