Penguin Classics give you the best possible editions of Charles Dickens's novels,
including all the original illustrations, useful and informative introductions, the
definitive, accurate text as it was meant to be published, a chronology of Dickens's life
and notes that fill in the background to the book. This Penguin Classics edition of
Oliver Twist also includes a glossary of Victorian thieves' slang and a map of
contemporary London.
The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by
a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood
innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid
and memorable characters - the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill
Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel
and popular melodrama, Dickens created an entirely newkind of fiction, scathing in its
indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and
mystery.
This is the first critical edition to use the Bentley’s Miscellany serial text
of 1837–9, showing Oliver Twist as it appeared to its earliest readers. It
includes Dickens’s 1841 introduction and 1850 preface, the original illustrations and a
glossary of contemporary slang.
