About This Book

One of the most popular of Dickens' books, this story of an orphaned boy who endures repeated abuse, and who falls in with the Artful Dodger and his band of little thieves is already familiar to many readers through stage and film presentations. The story was one of Dickens' own favorites, and the passages devoted to Sykes and Nancy were some of those he most often read aloud during his American tour.

About Charles Dickens

(1812-1870) The prodigious Charles Dickens, coming from an impoverished and unhappy childhood, was a lifelong champion of hungry children and needy families. His books had an immense impact on the social conscience of his day. But although he pities the down-at-the-heel slackers he writes about, he laughs at them — as well as at the pompous bullies in his stories. His massive novels are crammed with incident — catastrophic love affairs, murders, unjust accusations, lost heirs, drunken brawls, monsters, dying children, and mistaken identities. He shows all that is humorous, piteous, dramatic, and melodramatic about the complex lives of his many hundreds of memorable characters, and frequently . . . all at the same time!

His great books include (to name only a few): "David Copperfield," Oliver Twist," "A Christmas Carol," "Bleak House," "Dombey and Son, "Nicholas Nickelby," "Hard Times," "Little Dorrit," "The Old Curiosity Shop," "A Tale of Two Cities," and "Great Expectations."

Dickens was a tireless showman. Rewarded with wealth and fame in his own time, he undertook a massive (and lucrative) campaign of public reading late in his life. He went to America in 1867 and won the hearts of the American public, which he had previously alienated by his abuse of America's customs and manners in the novel "Martin Chuzzlewit".

A social reformer in life as well as in his prolific writing, Dickens's novels helped lead to reforms in schools, nursing, and public health, and were instrumental in abolishing imprisonment for debt.