Oliver Twist (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (B&N Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author), Jill Muller (Introduction)

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Product Description

Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

New introductions commissioned from today's 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 reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

 

One of Dickens’s most popular novels, Oliver Twist is the story of a young orphan who dares to say, "Please, sir, I want some more." After escaping from the dark and dismal workhouse where he was born, Oliver finds himself on the mean streets of Victorian-era London and is unwittingly recruited into a scabrous gang of scheming urchins. In this band of petty thieves Oliver encounters the extraordinary and vibrant characters who have captured readers’ imaginations for more than 150 years: the loathsome Fagin, the beautiful and tragic Nancy, the crafty Artful Dodger, and perhaps one of the greatest villains of all time—the terrifying Bill Sikes.

Rife with Dickens’s disturbing descriptions of street life, the novel is buoyed by the purity of the orphan Oliver. Though he is treated with cruelty and surrounded by coarseness for most of his life, his pious innocence leads him at last to salvation—and the shocking discovery of his true identity.

 

Features illustrations by George Cruikshank.

 

Jill Muller was born in England and educated at Mercy College and Columbia University, and currently teaches at Mercy College and Columbia University. She is working on a book on the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, to be published by Routledge.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Jill Muller's Introduction to Oliver Twist

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 Dickens's 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 Bentley's 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 Bentley's 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 month's 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, Dickens's 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, Dickens's readers found themselves plunged into London's criminal underworld. The novel's 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 Dickens's 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 Cruikshank's quirky illustrations, the novel was in a third edition by 1841, and even spawned an imitation, Thomas Prest's Oliver Twiss. It remained a bestseller through Dickens's 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 Dickens's rendition of Nancy's brutal murder sent audiences into fits of screaming and fainting, a physician waited backstage to monitor the ailing author's pulse rate. Dickens's 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 Dickens's 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 Twist's composition are no longer familiar to contemporary readers and may require some literary excavation, each of the various genres whose competing voices create the novel's seductive energy survive and are easily recognizable in modern forms of entertainment.



Like its predecessor, Pickwick Papers, Dickens's 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, Dickens's orphan does not grow up; he remains a frail and passive child throughout the novel, more victim than protagonist. Oliver's 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

• Mass Market Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics (May 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593080301
• ISBN-13: 978-1593080303
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #107,737 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

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4.0 out of 5 stars The master of irony at his best, October 28, 2009

By	Danielle Arostegui (Miami, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Oliver Twist is perhaps the most culturally prevalent of Mr. Dickens' novels. Everyone has heard the famous line: "Please sir, can I have some more?" What a lot of people don't realize is that Oliver Twist was actually Dickens' attempt at a social critique of the prevailing prejudices against the poor and downtrodden in Victorian England, and the appalling work and living conditions that they were subjected to as a result of the Poor Law of 1834. In this capacity Dickens was very successful; his novel helped draw attention to the problem and precipitated a wave of compassion toward the poor. However, his success in improving the image of one marginalized group was perhaps marred by the slandering of a second marginalized population: the Jews. Dickens' anti-semitism is very apparent in the character of the Jew Fagin who is repeatedly likened to a demon, and who is characterized by a jumble of derogatory Jewish stereotypes. By contrast, Oliver is hardly characterized at all except to be described as a kind of nebulous blob of pure goodness who is tried by hardship at every turn-- thereby winning our sympathy.

Like many of Dickens' novels, Twist's plot hangs on the convergence of coincidence. Though the seeming acts of fate that drive the story are clearly contrived, it is done in such a self-aware manner that the reader can't help but overlook the ridiculousness of the plot twists. My favorite part of Dickens' story-telling in this novel is the bitingly sarcastic manner in which it is written. The narrative is dry and exceptionally witty, and I frequently found myself laughing out loud at the masterful use of irony that turns what could be rather dark and depressing parts of the novel into dark comedy. The manner of narration makes up for the rather stereotypical good vs evil, villains-get-their-just-deserts plot formulation. I really enjoyed reading Oliver Twist, and I would definitely recommend it for a first time Dickens reader, with the one qualification that it does reflect the prevailing prejudices and racism of the time, and should thus be taken with a large grain of salt.