Oliver Twist

noun

1. a novel (1838) by Dickens.

Oliver Twist

1. (1838) A novel by Charles Dickens; the title character is an orphan boy. In one famous scene, Oliver is severely punished for asking for more gruel, or porridge (“Please, sir, I want some more”). Oliver later becomes a pickpocket in a gang of young thieves led by Fagin. Violent in plot, the book exposes the inadequacies of British public institutions for dealing with the poverty of children like Oliver.

Example Sentences

Yes, Dickinson has gone 21st-century Dickensian; Mike pesters people for ketamine, vodka and spare change like Oliver Twist begged for porridge.

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I think the film intends these youngsters to be a semirealistic gang of X-Men, but it doesn’t give them any dialogue or individuality; they’re treated more like the orphans in “Oliver Twist.”

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When you think about novels and films about the poor, you come upon the great classics: Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist,” Emile Zola’s “Germinal,” James Agee and Walker Evans’ “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” Jack London’s “The People of the Abyss” or John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”

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Has Lionel Bart’s musical, based on the Dickens novel “Oliver Twist” and first seen on Broadway in 1963, been turned into “Sweeney Todd”?

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“Oliver!,” based on the Charles Dickens novel “Oliver Twist,” is the story of an orphan’s search for belonging in that band of young pickpockets in 1830s London.

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