Skip to content

Oliver Twist (Signet Classics)
Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different

Oliver Twist (Signet Classics) Paperback - 1961

by Dickens, Charles

  • Used
  • Good
  • Paperback
Drop Ship Order

Description

Paperback. Good. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Used - Good
NZ$52.36
FREE Shipping to USA Standard delivery: 7 to 14 days
More Shipping Options
Ships from Bonita (California, United States)
The BIBLIO Guarantee | Ask Seller a Question

Details

  • Title Oliver Twist (Signet Classics)
  • Author Dickens, Charles
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Later Printing
  • Condition Used - Good
  • Pages 496
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Signet Classics, New York
  • Date December 1, 1961
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 0451523512.G
  • ISBN 9780451523518 / 0451523512
  • Weight 0.52 lbs (0.24 kg)
  • Dimensions 6.84 x 4.23 x 0.85 in (17.37 x 10.74 x 2.16 cm)
  • Reading level 530
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

About Bonita California, United States

Biblio member since 2020
Seller rating: This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.

Terms of Sale: 30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.

Browse books from Bonita

About this book

Oliver Twist, published in 1838, became one of English writer Charles Dickens's better-known stories and was the first Victorian novel with a child protagonist. 

Oliver Twist (Parish Boy's Progress) focuses on orphan Oliver Twist, born in a workhouse and sold into an apprenticeship with an undertaker. After escaping, Oliver travels to London, where he meets the "Artful Dodger", a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by an elderly criminal Fagin. The book shows an unromantic portrayal of criminals and the treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century.

Summary

Thanks to its colorful cast of characters and gritty portrayal of street life in Victorian London, Dickens’ Oliver Twist has captured readers’ hearts for more than 150 years. Today’s children will love it too. Oliver, a poor orphan, escapes the miserable workhouse where he was born only to fall into the clutches of a band of pickpockets led by the odious Fagin. Yet no amount of cruelty can destroy his purity…and through his goodness, he finds salvation.

From the publisher

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation,but also the horror of the infamous debtors’ prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and “slave” factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years’ formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney’s clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.

First line

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 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 business at all events-the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

First Edition Identification

Oliver Twist was first published as a serial from 1837 to 1839 and released as a three-volume book in 1838 before the serialization ended.

The first edition was published by Richard Bentley in London, 1838. Octavo, three volumes, original reddish-brown cloth, gilt titles to the spine, front and rear panels marked with a stamp. Features 24 illustrated plates by George Cruikshank. 

The first issue has the "Fireside" plate in volume 3 and "Boz" listed as the author on all title pages. It was issued on November 9, 1838. At Dicken's insistence, the Fireside plate was replaced with the "Church" plate, and Dickens's name replaced "Boz". The book was then reissued in three volumes 7 days after the first issue, on November 16.

The First US Edition of Oliver Twist was published in New York by Jemima M. Lewer in 1838, as two volumes, bound in modern brown quarter-leather bindings, with marbled paper boards.

Categories

Hang on… we’re fetching the requested page.