Category: Novels

Oliver Twist, Vol. 1 (of 3)

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, it boasts of one which is common to most towns, great or small, to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was bo...

Chapters

5. CHAPTER V.

OLIVER, being left to himself in the undertaker’s shop, set the lamp down on a workman’s bench, and gazed timidly about him with a feeling of awe and dread, which many people a...

14. CHAPTER XIV.

OLIVER soon recovered from the fainting-fit into which Mr. Brownlow’s abrupt exclamation had thrown him; and the subject of the picture was carefully avoided, both by the old ge...

2. CHAPTER II.

FOR the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception—he was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the in...

13. CHAPTER XIII.

REVERTS TO THE MERRY OLD GENTLEMAN AND HIS YOUTHFUL FRIENDS, THROUGH WHOM A NEW ACQUAINTANCE IS INTRODUCED TO THE INTELLIGENT READER, AND CONNECTED WITH WHOM VARIOUS PLEASANT MA...

16. CHAPTER XVI.

THE narrow streets and courts at length terminated in a large open space, scattered about which, were pens for beasts, and other indications of a cattle-market. Sikes slackened...

19. CHAPTER XIX.

IT was a chill, damp, windy night, when the Jew, buttoning his great-coat tight round his shrivelled body, and pulling the collar up over his ears so as completely to obscure th...

8. CHAPTER VIII.

OLIVER reached the style at which the bypath terminated, and once more gained the high-road. It was eight o’clock now; and, though he was nearly five miles away from the town, h...

17. CHAPTER XVII.

IT is the custom on the stage in all good, murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes in as regular alternation as the layers of red and white in a side of...

3. CHAPTER III.

FOR a week after the commission of the impious and profane offence of asking for more, Oliver remained a close prisoner in the dark and solitary room to which he had been consig...

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

ABOUT noon next day, when the Dodger and Master Bates had gone out to pursue their customary avocations, Mr. Fagin took the opportunity of reading Oliver a long lecture on the c...

11. CHAPTER XI.

THE offence had been committed within the district, and indeed in the immediate neighbourhood of a very notorious metropolitan police office. The crowd had only the satisfaction...

4. CHAPTER IV.

IN great families, when an advantageous place cannot be obtained, either in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, for the young man who is growing up, it is a very ge...

12. CHAPTER XII.

THE coach rattled away down Mount Pleasant and up Exmouth-street,—over nearly the same ground as that which Oliver had traversed when he first entered London in company with the...

7. CHAPTER VII.

NOAH CLAYPOLE ran along the streets at his swiftest pace, and paused not once for breath until he reached the workhouse-gate. Having rested here for a minute or so, to collect a...

15. CHAPTER XV.

IN the obscure parlour of a low public-house, situate in the filthiest part of Little Saffron-Hill,—a dark and gloomy den, where a flaring gaslight burnt all day in the winter-t...

9. CHAPTER IX.

IT was late next morning when Oliver awoke from a sound, long sleep. There was no other person in the room but the old Jew, who was boiling some coffee in a saucepan for breakfa...

10. CHAPTER X.

FOR many days Oliver remained in the Jew’s room, picking the marks out of the pocket-handkerchiefs, (of which a great number were brought home,) and sometimes taking part in the...

6. CHAPTER VI.

THE month’s trial over, Oliver was formally apprenticed. It was a nice sickly season just at this time. In commercial phrase, coffins were looking up; and, in the course of a fe...

1. CHAPTER I.

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, it boasts of...