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Charles Dickens

      Oliver Twist

      OLIVER TWIST

      When Oliver Twist was first published in 1838, it was not fashionable to write novels that showed life in all its miserable reality. But Dickens wanted to shock his readers. He wanted to show criminals as they really were, and to reveal all the horrors and violence that hid in the narrow, dirty backstreets of London. So he gives us the evil Fagin, the brutal Bill Sikes, and a crowd of thieves and robbers, who lie and cheat and steal, and live in fear of prison or the hangman’s rope around their necks.

      Dickens also had another purpose. He wanted to show that goodness can survive through every kind of hardship. So he gives us little Oliver Twist – an orphan thrown into a world of poverty and crime, starved and beaten and unloved. He gives us Nancy – poor, miserable, unhappy Nancy, who struggles to stay loyal in a cruel world.

      And, as in all the best stories, goodness triumphs over evil in the end.

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0X2 6DPOxford University Press is a department of the University of OxfordIt furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,and education by publishing worldwide inOxford New YorkAuckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong KarachiKuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City NairobiNew Delhi Shanghai Taipei TorontoWith offices inArgentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France GreeceGuatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal SingaporeSouth Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine VietnamOXFORD and OXFORD ENGLISH are registered trade marks ofOxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countriesThis edition © Oxford University Press 2008Database right Oxford University Press (maker)First published in Oxford Bookworms 19922 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1No unauthorized photocopyingAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriatereprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproductionoutside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department,Oxford University Press, at the address aboveYou must not circulate this book in any other binding or coverand you must impose this same condition on any acquirerAny websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain andtheir addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information onlyOxford University Press disclaims any responsibility for the contentISBN 978 0 19 479266 0A complete recording of this Bookworms edition of Oliver Twist is available on audio CD ISBN 978 0 19 479246 2Printed in Hong Kong Illustrations by: George Cruikshank courtesy of the Bodleian Library,from the engravings in the 1846 editionWord count (main text): 26,560 wordsFor more information on the Oxford Bookworms Library, visit www.oup.com/bookwormswww.oup.com/bookwormse-Book ISBN 978 0 19 478628 7e-Book first published 2012

      PEOPLE IN THIS STORY

      Oliver Twist

      Mrs Mann, in charge of the ‘baby farm’

      Mr Bumble, the beadle

      Mrs Corney, a widow, in charge of the workhouse

      Old Sally, a woman in the workhouse

      Mr Sowerberry, an undertaker

      Mrs Sowerberry, his wife

      Charlotte, the Sowerberrys’ servant

      Noah Claypole, a charity-boy

      Fagin

      The Artful Dodger, one of Fagin’s boys

      Charley Bates, another of Fagin’s boys

      Bill Sikes, a robber

      Nancy, Bill Sikes’ girl

      Monks, a mysterious stranger

      Mr Brownlow, an old gentleman

      Mrs Bedwin, Mr Brownlow’s housekeeper

      Mr Grimwig, an old friend of Mr Brownlow’s

      Mrs Maylie, a kind lady

      Harry Maylie, her son

      Rose Maylie, her niece

      Dr Losberne, a friend of the Maylies’

      1

      Oliver’s early life

      Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse, and when he arrived in this hard world, it was very doubtful whether he would live beyond the first three minutes. He lay on a hard little bed and struggled to start breathing.

      Oliver fought his first battle without much assistance from the two people present at his birth. One was an old woman, who was nearly always drunk, and the other was a busy local doctor, who was not paid enough to be very interested in Oliver’s survival. After all, death was a common event in the workhouse, where only the poor and homeless lived.

      However, Oliver managed to draw his first breath, and then announced his arrival to the rest of the workhouse by crying loudly. His mother raised her pale young face from the pillow and whispered, ‘Let me see the child, and die.’

      The doctor turned away from the fire, where he had been warming his hands. ‘You must not talk about dying yet,’ he said to her kindly. He gave her the child to hold. Lovingly, she kissed the baby on its forehead with her cold white lips, then stared wildly around the room, fell back – and died.

      ‘Poor dear!’ said the nurse, hurriedly putting a green glass bottle back in the pocket of her long skirt.

      The doctor began to put on his coat. ‘The baby is weak and will probably have difficulties,’ he said. ‘If so, give it a little milk to keep it quiet.’ Then he looked at the dead woman. ‘The mother was a good-looking girl. Where did she come from?’

      ‘She was brought here last night,’ replied the old woman. ‘She was found lying in the street. She’d walked some distance, judging by her shoes, which were worn to pieces. Where she came from, where she was going to, or what her name was, nobody knows.’

      The doctor lifted the girl’s left hand. ‘The old story,’ he said sadly, shaking his head. ‘No wedding ring, I see. Ah! Good night.’

      And so Oliver was left with only the drunken nurse. Without clothes, under his first blanket, he could have been the child of a king or a beggar. But when the woman dressed him later in rough cotton clothes, yellow with age, he looked exactly what he was – an orphan in a workhouse, ready for a life of misery, hunger, and neglect.

      Oliver cried loudly. If he could have known that he was a workhouse orphan, perhaps he would have cried even more loudly.

      There was no one to look after the baby in the workhouse, so Oliver was sent to a special ‘baby farm’ nearby. There, he and thirty other children rolled around the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing. Mrs Mann, the old woman who ‘looked after’ them, was very experienced. She knew what was good for children, and a full stomach was very dangerous to their health. She also knew what was good for herself, so she kept for her own use the money that she was given for the children’s food. The board responsible for the orphans sometimes checked on the health of the children, but they always sent the beadle, a kind of local policeman, to announce their visit the day before. So whenever the board arrived, of course, the children were always neat and clean.

      This was

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