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OLIVER TWIST
OR
THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS
CHARLES DICKENS
Open
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About the author
can call to mind, so help me God!"
Charles John Huffam
Dickens (February 7, 1812 -
June 9, 1870), pen-name "Boz",
was a British novelist of the Vic-
torian era. The popularity of his
books during his lifetime and in
present days is demonstrated by
the fact that none of his novels
has ever gone out of print.
Dickens became a journalist, reporting parliamentary de-
bate and travelling Britain by stagecoach to cover election
campaigns. His journalism informed his first collection of
pieces
Sketches by Boz
and he continued to contribute to and
edit journals for much of his life. In his early twenties he
made a name for himself with his first novel
The Pickwick
Papers
.
On April 2, 1836 Charles married Catherine Hogarth with
whom he was to have ten children. In 1842 they traveled
together to the United States, the trip is described in the
short travelog American Notes and is also used as the basis of
some of the episodes in David Copperfield.
Charles was born in Portsmouth, England, to John Dickens,
a naval pay clerk, and his wife Elizabeth Barrow. When
Charles was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. When
he was ten, the family relocated to Camden Town in Lon-
don.
On the 9th of April 1865 Dickens, while returning from
France, was involved in the Staplehurst train crash in which
the first six carriages of the train plunged off of a bridge that
was being repaired. The only first-class carriage to remain on
the track was the one Dickens was in. Dickens spent some
time tending the wounded and dying before rescuers arrived;
before finally leaving he remembered the unfinished manu-
script for
Our Mutual Friend
and he returned to his carriage
to retrieve it.
Dickens managed to avoid appearance at the inquiry into
He received some education at a private school but when
his father was imprisoned for debt, Charles wound up work-
ing 10-hours a day in a London boot-blacking factory lo-
cated near to the present day Charing Cross railway station,
when he was twelve. Resentment of his situation and the con-
ditions working-class people lived under became major themes
of his works. Dickens wrote, "No advice, no counsel, no en-
couragement, no consolation, no support from anyone that I
Oliver Twist.
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the crash as it would have become known that he was travel-
ling that day with Ellen Ternan and her mother, which could
have caused a scandal. Ellen had been Dickens’ companion
since the break-up of his marriage and she was implicated in
that break-up.
Although unharmed he never really recovered from the
crash, which is most evident in the fact that his normally
prolific writing shrank to completing
Our Mutual Friend
and
starting the unfinished
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
. Much of
his time was taken up with public readings from his best-
loved novels. The shows were incredibly popular and on De-
cember 2, 1867 Dickens gave his first public reading in the
United States at a New York City theatre. The effort and
passion he put into these readings with individual character
voices is also thought to have contributed to his death.
Exactly five years to the day after the Staplehurst crash,
on June 9, 1870, he died. He was buried in the Poets’ Corner
of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his tomb reads:
“He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the
oppressed; and by his death, one of England’s greatest writers
is lost to the world.”
In the 1980s the historic Eastgate House in Rochester,
Kent was converted into a Charles Dickens museum, and an
annual Dickens Festival is held in the city. The house in Ports-
mouth in which Dickens was born has also be made into a
museum.
Contents
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number.
Oliver Twist.
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1
Oliver Twist.
Chapter 1.
TREATS OF THE PLACE WHERE OLIVER TWIST WAS BORN
AND OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING HIS BIRTH
NOTICE
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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 an-
ciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a work-
house; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which
I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no
possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the busi-
ness at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed
to the head of this chapter.
For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sor-
row and trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained a matter of
considerable doubt whether the child would survive to bear
any name at all; in which case it is somewhat more than prob-
2
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3
able that these memoirs would never have appeared; or, if they
had, that being comprised within a couple of pages, they would
have possessed the inestimable merit of being the most con-
cise and faithful specimen of biography, extant in the literature
of any age or country.
Although I am not disposed to maintain that the being
born in a workhouse, is in itself the most fortunate and envi-
able circumstance that can possibly befall a human being, I do
mean to say that in this particular instance, it was the best
thing for Oliver Twist that could by possibility have occurred.
The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing
Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration,—a
troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered nec-
essary to our easy existence; and for some time he lay gasping
on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this
world and the next: the balance being decidedly in favour of
the latter. Now, if, during this brief period, Oliver had been
surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced
nurses, and doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevi-
tably and indubitably have been killed in no time. There being
nobody by, however, but a pauper old woman, who was ren-
dered rather misty by an unwonted allowance of beer; and a
parish surgeon who did such matters by contract; Oliver and
Nature fought out the point between them. The result was,
that, after a few struggles, Oliver breathed, sneezed, and pro-
ceeded to advertise to the inmates of the workhouse the fact of
a new burden having been imposed upon the parish, by set-
ting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have been expected
from a male infant who had not been possessed of that very
useful appendage, a voice, for a much longer space of time than
three minutes and a quarter.
As Oliver gave this first proof of the free and proper action
of his lungs, the patchwork coverlet which was carelessly flung
over the iron bedstead, rustled; the pale face of a young woman
was raised feebly from the pillow; and a faint voice imperfectly
articulated the words, 'Let me see the child, and die.'
The surgeon had been sitting with his face turned towards
the fire: giving the palms of his hands a warm and a rub alter-
nately. As the young woman spoke, he rose, and advancing to
the bed's head, said, with more kindness than might have been
expected of him:
'Oh, you must not talk about dying yet.'
'Lor bless her dear heart, no!' interposed the nurse, hastily
depositing in her pocket a green glass bottle, the contents of
which she had been tasting in a corner with evident satisfac-
tion.
'Lor bless her dear heart, when she has lived as long as I
have, sir, and had thirteen children of her own, and all on 'em
dead except two, and them in the wurkus with me, she'll know
better than to take on in that way, bless her dear heart! Think
what it is to be a mother, there's a dear young lamb do.'
Apparently this consolatory perspective of a mother's pros-
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