Olejar Books

'I have thrown my whole heart and soul into Oliver Twist," wrote the young Dickens in 1836.
He did so to some purpose: Oliver 'asking for more and Mr Bumble soon became household words. In tracing the parish boy's progress, Dickens makes his scathing and timely comment on the inhumanity of the new Poor Law, but also presents almost allegorically his belief in 'the principle of Good surviving in every adverse circumstance, and triumphing at last. The suspense of the narrative is not affected. Early readers were startled but convinced by Dickens's picture of the criminal underworld in its
'miserable reality', shorn of false glamour but not without macabre comedy, emphasized by Cruikshank's illustrations. The present edition gives eight of his twenty-five plates, following
Dickens's own later selection.
The Author's Preface' added in 1841 in defence of his purpose is given in its complete original form, not omitting the girl is a prostitute'. Dickens's exceptionally careful revision of the text of the novel in 1846 was, for the first time, taken as the basis of the Clarendon edition in 1966, which is reproduced here.