Chapter 1
And what an excellent example of the power of dress young Oliver Twist was. Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a begga...
[…] the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved, that Oliver should be ‘farmed,’ or, in other words, that he should be despatched to a branch-workhouse some three m...
Chapter 5
Noah was a charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan. […] The shop-boys in the neighborhood had long been in the habit of branding Noah in the public streets with the ignominious epithets of &#...
Chapter 7
"What have paupers to do with soul or spirit either? It’s quite enough that we let ’em have bodies." (7.32)
Chapter 8
The sun was rising in all his splendid beauty, but the light only seemed to show the boy his own lonesomeness and desolation as he sat with bleeding feet and covered with dust upon a cold door-step...
Chapter 9
"What a fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent; dead men never bring awkward stories to light. The prospect of the gallows, too, makes them hardy and bold. Ah, it’s a fine th...
Chapter 10
"Stop thief! stop thief!" There is a human passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast. One wretched, breathless child, panting with exhaustion, terror in his looks, agony in...
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
When the Dodger and his accomplished friend Master Bates joined in the hue and cry which was raised at Oliver’s heels, in consequence of their executing an illegal conveyance of Mr. Brownlow’s...
Chapter 14
[…] as Oliver looked out of the parlour window, and saw the Jew roll [his old clothes] up in his bag and walk away, he felt quite delighted to think that they were safely gone, and that there...
Chapter 15
[…] overpowered by the conviction of the bystanders that he was really the hardened little wretch he was described to be, what could one poor child do? (15.63)
Chapter 16
Master Bates […] led Oliver into an adjacent kitchen, where there were two or three of the beds on which he had slept before; and here, with many uncontrollable bursts of laughter, he produce...
Chapter 17
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 streaky, well-cured...
Chapter 18
"He’ll come to be scragged, won’t he?" "I don’t know what that means," replied Oliver, looking round. "Something in this way, old feller," said Charley. As he said it, Master Bate...
Chapter 19
He kept on his course through many winding and narrow ways until he reached Bethnal Green; then, turning suddenly off to the left, he soon became involved in a maze of the mean dirty streets which...
Chapter 20
It was a history of the lives and trials of great criminals, and the pages were soiled and thumbed with use. […] The descriptions were so vivid and real, that the sallow pages seemed to turn...
Chapter 23
"Out-of-door relief, properly managed,-- properly managed, ma’am,-- is the porochial safe-guard. The great principle of out-of-door relief is to give the paupers exactly what they don’t...
Chapter 27
He […] hastens to pay them that respect which their position demands, and to treat them with all that duteous ceremony which their exalted rank and (by consequence) great virtues imperatively...
Chapter 31
[…] there came a rumour that two men and a boy were in the cage at Kingston, who had been apprehended overnight under suspicious circumstances […]. The suspicious circumstances, however...
Chapter 32
And, when Sunday came, how differently the day was spent from any manner in which he had ever spent it yet! (32.54)
Chapter 34
There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it, and enable it to ramble as it pleases. So far...
Chapter 36
"But, to speak seriously, Harry, has any communication from the great nobs produced this sudden anxiety on your part to be gone?" (36.5)
Chapter 37
The laced coat and the cocked hat, where were they? He still wore knee-breeches and dark cotton stockings on his nether limbs, but they were not the breeches. The coat was wide-skirted, and in that...
Chapter 38
This was far from being a place of doubtful character, for it had long been known as the residence of none but low and desperate ruffians, who, under various pretences of living by their labour, su...
Chapter 40
But struggling with these better feelings was pride, – the vice of the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured. […] even this degraded being felt too...
Chapter 43
"[…] ’cause nobody will never know half of what he was. How will he stand in the Newgate Calendar? P’raps not be there at all. Oh, my eye, my eye, wot a blow it is!" (43.35)
Chapter 44
"Let me go," said the girl with great earnestness; then, sitting herself down on the floor before the door, she said – "Bill, let me go; you don’t know what you’re doing – y...
Chapter 46
‘I am chained to my old life. I loathe and hate it now, but I cannot leave it. I must have gone too far to turn back,-- and yet I don’t know.’ (46.74)
Chapter 50
[…] every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage;-- all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch. (50.4)
Chapter 51
"He said ‘God bless you’ to me when I ran away," cried the boy with a burst of affectionate emotion; "and I will say ‘God bless you’ now, and show him how I love him for it!...
Chapter 52
With what a rattling noise the drop went down; and how suddenly they changed from strong and vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes! (52.17)
Chapter 53
I do believe that the shade of that poor girl often hovers about that solemn nook – ay, though it is a church, and she was weak and erring. (53.16)