50 episodes listed below
Dickens's workhouse satire and London menace, read chapter by chapter.
A LibriVox public-domain recording of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, with each episode carrying a single numbered chapter of the novel. The chapters run from bitter workhouse comedy, with orphans 'farmed' out at sevenpence ha'penny a head, to Monks held under threat in Mr Brownlow's back room and Sikes on the run.
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This is Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist read aloud from the page. It is a LibriVox public-domain recording, labelled version 4 in its title, with one numbered chapter per episode. The packaging is minimal. Most chapters open with the standard LibriVox announcement: the chapter number, the book and its author, a public-domain notice and a credit to Tighe Hynes for the recording. Then the novel begins, and several chapters end on a plain 'End of chapter' line. The appeal is the novel's own range, and these chapters show a lot of it. Chapter 2 is Dickens at his most acidly funny. Parish authorities inquire 'with dignity' of workhouse authorities, the infant Oliver is 'farmed' out to a branch workhouse, and the elderly woman in charge keeps most of the sevenpence ha'penny paid for each child every week. The narrator's deadpan verdict is that she is a very great experimental philosopher. Chapter 17 opens with the narrator comparing stage melodrama's swings between tragic and comic scenes to the red and white layers of streaky bacon, which describes this book as well as anything. The same chapter brings Mr Bumble the beadle to Mrs Mann's, where a pale, thin child called Dick trembles under his gaze. It ends with Mr Brownlow forbidding Mrs Bedwin ever to mention that boy's name, and with sad hearts in his house that night. Chapter 14 is gentler: a weak, recovering Oliver in the housekeeper's room asks why the portrait of a beautiful lady has been taken down, and Mrs Bedwin steers him toward stories about her married daughter in the country. Its heading also promises a remarkable prediction from one Mr Grimwig. Then the late chapters turn. Chapter 48, headed 'The Flight of Sykes', begins with a bright sun over London shedding its 'equal ray' through cathedral dome and rotten crevice alike. Later, Sikes starts up at a hawker's patter about wine-stains, mud-stains and blood-stains, and before the chapter is out he makes a running noose for his own dog, which bolts. Chapter 49 is a standoff in a back room. Mr Brownlow has Monks brought into his house between two men, warns him that leaving will mean a charge of fraud and robbery, and answers the question of by what authority Monks was kidnapped with two words: 'By mine.' Chapter 50 moves to a corner of London by the Thames that the narrator calls the filthiest and strangest of the city's hidden places. There, men in hiding draw their chairs together and whisper as if a murdered woman lay in the next room, until a knock comes at the door. The chapter ends with a pursuit, a dangling body and the dog's fatal leap. Because the episodes are titled only by chapter number, the order is easy to follow. For a first taste, Chapter 2 shows the satire and Chapters 48 to 50 show the menace.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants Dickens's own words for Oliver Twist rather than an adaptation or summary, and who is happy to follow a classic novel one numbered chapter at a time, workhouse satire and London violence alike.
What sets it apart: It doesn't discuss or dramatise the book. It presents Dickens's prose directly, one chapter per episode, with only a brief LibriVox announcement, usually with a recording credit, before each one.
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by Charles Dickens. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Oliver is led to the lair of their elderly criminal trainer Fagin, naively unaware of their unlawful activities. Packed with a host of unforgettable characters this story will have you laughing and crying in turn(but mostly laughing). A must for any book lover. (Summary by Wiki and T.Hynes)
Mr. Bumble calls a poor family proud; you get to enjoy being appalled at his confidence.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Oliver's first night in the undertaker's shop feels haunted, and his first funeral deepens his dislike of the trade.
Chapter 5 follows Oliver through the undertaker's shop as dread gathers in the ordinary furniture of the trade. Left alone with the unfinished coffin, elm boards, black cloth, and painted funeral scene, he reads the dim room as a haunted place and half expects terror to rise…
Nancy's confession to Rose Maylie turns Oliver's hidden identity into a threat with a human cost.
Chapter 40 makes a secret meeting feel like a moral reckoning. Nancy, carrying shame over the life she has lived, brings Rose Maylie what she overheard from Monks.
Nancy's urgent errand gives Dickens's shabby criminal world a sudden, quietly gripping focus.
Chapter XXXIX turns underworld business into a slow study in degradation. William Sykes wakes in a mean, badly furnished room, accepts that the payment may leave him only eighteen pounds, and lets the evening sink into Fagin's circle.
Dickens lets stage comedy sharpen, rather than soften, Oliver's suffering.
The episode turns Oliver Twist toward another injury, using Dickens's joke about the stage's steady trade in tragedy and comedy as more than a comic aside. Oliver's own fortunes begin to feel like a crueler version of that rhythm. The shift from Mr.
A suspenseful reckoning opens Oliver's family mysteries, with grief still shadowing the chapter's celebrations.
Chapter 51 brings Oliver toward his native town with Mrs. Maylie, Rose, Mrs. Bedwin, the doctor, and Mr. Brownlow close at hand, while the tension from Monks's forced admissions still hangs over the journey.
This episode reads Chapter 14 of Oliver Twist, where Oliver recovers from a fainting fit and inquires about a removed portrait.
A Librivox recording of Chapter 2 of Oliver Twist, describing Oliver's early life in the workhouse and his farming out to a branch workhouse.
This episode features a dramatic reading of Chapter 49 of Oliver Twist, where Mr.
Chapter 51 of Oliver Twist brings Oliver back to his native town with Rose, Mrs.
Chapter 5 of Oliver Twist follows Oliver in Sowerberry’s undertaker shop, where coffins, black cloth, and an unfinished grave-like recess leave him frightened and isolated.
Chapter XXXIX of Oliver Twist follows Nancy, Sikes, Fagin, and Monks through a night of illness, money, and secret visits in London.
Nancy meets Rose Maylie in Chapter 40 of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist and reveals that she overheard Monks and Fagin in London.
Chapter 17 of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist follows Mr.
Chapter 50 of Dickens's Oliver Twist opens with a long description of Jacob's Island in Southwark, a decaying district ringed by the tidal moat of Folly Ditch.
Chapter 48 of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, read by Tighe Hynes for LibriVox, follows Bill Sikes through the day after the murder as he scrubs his clothes, burns a club, and flees London via Islington and Highgate.