Oliver Twist Readalong October to December. Everyone Welcome

[DesdamonasHandkerchief]

For the Dickens aficionados and the Dickens curious alike. We’re going to attempt a three month readalong of Dickens second published full length novel Oliver Twist.
As it was published in three volumes we will be tackling a volume a month:

October Volume 1
22 Chapters

November Volume 2
14 Chapters

December Volume 3
15 Chapters.

We’ll discuss each volume on the last day of the month (so volume one on 31st October) and have a check in mid month for those who want it.

Do join the OT train @FuzzyCaoraDhubh, we’ve missed you!

Fallen women have deeper voices 😂
Love this!!
(alto, loud and proud)

I also don't remember the plot (despite having seen the musical as a child) so thank you for the no spoilers. I fell foul of reading the Introduction in Dombey & Son and the massive spoiler in that!

Intetesting thoughts on where Oliver learnt his moral compass. I wonder if a workhouse child woukd have had the no sinning (eg theft) drummed into him in a fire and brimstone sort of way rather than the modelled way we try to teach children these days.

I still need to finish a few chapters of the first volume, but am enjoying it.

Unless I am missing some signs which would have been understood by Dickens' original audience, I don't get a sense (yet) that Sikes and Nancy are in a relationship. She appears with Betsy as often as not, and although she helps Sikes to kidnap Oliver it seems that she goes along more as a useful accomplice, as one of the gang, rather than as his partner. Perhaps it gets made more clear as we go on.

I found it interesting that Mr Sowerberry, of all the adults Oliver comes across before he runs away, was actually relatively kind/sympathetic to Oliver, or at least didn't actively dislike or mistreat him, and that it was his wife and Noah who were the ones to beat Oliver and lock him up. Being used to Harry Secombe's fairly comic portrayal of Mr Bumble I was surprised how much crueller the "real" one was, and all the more awful because he genuinely believes that Oliver is a wicked child who is doomed for a terrible end.

Could have done without saintly dying Dick, but hey ho!

I agree Mr Bumble is dreadfully cruel - almost worse than the thieves and kidnappers - because he believes he is in the right.

Oh yes saintly dying Dick - another of Dickens’ too good to be true crew - I’d forgotten about him.

I think I still visualise the characters from the Oliver! musical - Oliver reed was spot on as were fagin and Nancy. I can visualise Mr Bumble as anyone other than Harry Secombe.
I remember when I read The Five which was about the women killed by the Ripper, the workhouse descriptions were very powerful, and what came across in that was the powerless of the poor, and particularly women, in the machine of the workhouse system

I loved The Five @HagCymraeg . I read and watch a lot of true crime and think there has been a definite shift away from more male-led focus on the perpetrators and much more on the victims since it was published. Have you read Story of a Murder, about the Crippen case? I got about halfway through and then got side-tracked to the extent that I think I need to start again as I have forgotten a lot of the detail about his early life and the start of their marriage.

Also pleased to see that "Hand it over, you avaricious old skeleton" was actually a line from the book, as I always liked Oliver Reed's delivery of that!

I haven't read The Story of a Murder but my dd has and she loved it so it is on my TBR. My only knowledge of the Crippen case is from the John Boyne book, which was good but obviously fictionalised.

The Story of a Murder is indeed really good, @HagCymraeg - it totally sets the record straight about what really happened imho.

I’m finding it interesting how contemporary the underworld slang makes OT feel - when he first meets the Artful Dodger, he forks out to get Oliver some grub, and later Charley praises Oliver’s fine new togs, with Sikes noting ‘you’ve got the kid’ when they drag poor Oliver along to do the burglary. I never really think of early 19thc people talking about ‘kids’, but it’s much, much older than Dickens’s time - apparently, though, his use of it here was the real start of making the term acceptable in general use as a word for child, not just as vulgar/criminal slang.
(I love slang and confess to having far too many books about it - there’s also a great ‘Glossary of Thieves’ Cant and Slang’ in my Penguin edition)

Dickens was always so great and perceptive with how people really spoke - I think that’s why I feel his writing connects, for me, anyway.