Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy's Progress.

DICKENS, Charles.

Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy's Progress.

“Please, sir, I want some more”: First Edition of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist

London: Richard Bentley, 1838.

$6,500.00

In Stock Item Number: RRB-150707

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First edition of one of Dickens' most recognizable works, with "By Boz" to each title page and the corrected "Church" plate. Octavo, three volumes bound in full levant red morocco by Bayntun Riviere with gilt titles and elaborate gilt tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt ruling and central gilt vignette depicting a bust of Dickens to each front panel, gilt facsimile autograph to each rear panel, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles stamp-signed by Bayntun Riviere, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, etched frontispiece to each volume and 21 plates after George Cruikshank. Early signature dated 1839 to the title page of vol. 1 and versos of frontispieces, second issue. In fine condition. Housed in a custom slipcase.

Dickens turned in Oliver Twist to the novel of crime and terror, fusing elements of the Gothic and the sensational with an unflinching realism about poverty, violence, and institutional cruelty. As Baugh observes, while certain figures are rendered with “humorous realism,” the prevailing tone is notably darker: the work is shadowed by “gloomy memories of the author’s own neglected childhood,” and its most dramatic episodes unfold within an atmosphere “genuinely eerie and sinister.” The novel’s emotional intensity and moral urgency were not merely aesthetic choices but reflected Dickens’s broader conviction—widely shared among his contemporaries—that fiction could serve as an instrument of social reform. Through its exposure of the workhouse system, the criminal underworld, and the precariousness of childhood itself, Oliver Twist advanced a sustained critique of social indifference and the structural injustices that shaped early Victorian life.