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 new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.
Fully illustrated with the original black and white illustrations by George Cruikshank.
NB: I would now regard this as a "finished" version of this eBook. If you find
any errors,
please either post on this thread, or send a PM to "Harry T" to let me know about them.
EDIT: 16 Dec 07
Significantly improved the formatting and layout of the book and added the original author's preface, which was missing from the earlier versions. Uploaded v3.
EDIT: 3 Jan 08
Thoroughly proof-read and hundreds of errors corrected. Uploaded v4.
EDIT: 28 Jan 08
Proof-read against a printed edition. Many lines of text missing from the PG original restored. Hundreds of paragraph breaks corrected, plus miscellaneous other errors. Added character list and a new cover picture. Uploaded v5.
EDIT: 20 Mar 08
More proofing. Quite a few extra minor errors corrected, and paragraph breaks brought into line with the printed edition. Uploaded v6.
EDIT: 26 Dec 08
A line-by-line comparison against a printed edition (the "Oxford Illustrated Dickens" edition) has revealed many dozens of previously-unnoticed errors, and several words (and even lines) of omitted text. All now corrected - this is probably now pretty much as good as it's going to get. Uploaded v7.
EDIT: 16 Oct 09
Replaced the cover to be consistent with the rest of the MR Dickens series. Corrected some issues with the HTML - these have no visual impact. Uploaded v8.
EDIT: 6 Apr 10
MR user Fledchen kindly reported a number of errors in the text. Corrected these and uploaded v9.
Previous download count: 1599
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