Audiobook · read by volunteers
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
Read by Stephan Möbius, Katy Preston, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), Jim Cadwell, Kristin LeMoine, Lenny Glionna Jr., Roger Melin, Martin Clifton, Kirsten Ferreri, Alys AtteWater · 53 chapters · 17 h 01
About the book
An orphan boy asks for more gruel and sets off a scandal. From the workhouse he is apprenticed to an undertaker, runs away to London and falls in with a gang of young pickpockets led by the cunning Fagin. Charles Dickens drew on the squalor and cruelty he knew to write Oliver Twist, a novel that is both a gripping story and a protest against the treatment of the poor. Its comedy is sharp, its villains are unforgettable, and its tenderness is never far from its anger. Fifty-three chapters and some seventeen hours of listening, read by ten volunteers, take you through fogbound streets, thieves’ dens and the occasional haven of kindness. Whether it is your first Dickens or your fifth, this tale of survival and goodness still has a powerful pull.
Introduction
Charles Dickens, who lived from 1812 to 1870, was one of the most popular English novelists of the Victorian age. Oliver Twist, published in 1838, was his second novel and appeared first as a serial in a magazine, a form that suited his gift for suspense and for ending each instalment on a hook. Its hero is a workhouse orphan, and the book places a child at the centre of a story of poverty and crime.
Like much of Dickens’s work, the novel was meant to draw public attention to the social evils of its time. These include the harsh treatment of the poor in workhouses, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. Yet it is also full of sarcasm and dark humour, even when it deals with serious matters, and it exposes the hypocrisies of respectable society. Characters such as Fagin, Bill Sikes and the Artful Dodger have become part of popular culture.
The story has been adapted many times for film and television, and it was the basis of a successful British musical, Oliver! The original, with all its humour and menace, rewards a full hearing.
This LibriVox recording has fifty-three chapters and lasts about seventeen hours. Ten volunteers share the reading, among them Stephan Möbius, Katy Preston and Kara Shallenberg, who died in 2023. It is a satisfying and richly peopled listen for long stretches of time. The mix of humour, menace and compassion gives the story a force that has kept it popular for nearly two centuries, and the long recording allows its many scenes and characters time to develop.
Public domain
Charles Dickens died in 1870: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text