Latif Doss Books

The gaunt, pathetic figure of orphan Oliver being refused more gruel has become a literary and cultural icon, embedded in the national consciousness as a searing image of poverty and helplessness, dramatizing as it does the extent to which what is taken for granted at home is denied in the workhouse. Yet the novel, a powerful indictment of the workhouse, is also more than that, for even as Oliver escapes its callous grasp, he is snared by the criminal underworld of Fagin's gang. Oliver's struggle to be free of Fagin and Sikes, and his desperate search for a loving, nurturing home, express the theme that forms the real crux of the book; the poignant depiction of the evils of homelessness and its consequences. Full of vivid characterizations, biting irony and ghoulish humor, Oliver Twist is one of Dickens most enduringly popular works. The Toby Press edition of Oliver Twist is based on the Gadshill Edition of 1897, and includes Dickens's preface to the third edition. It also features an introductory essay and chronology by Professor H.M. Daleski, the former President of the International Dickens Society and formerly Chairman of the Department of English at Hebrew University. Book jacket.

The adventures of an orphaned young man in Victorian England who is given a great deal of money by an unknown benefactor to enable him to live as a gentleman, pursuing a good education and fulfilling great expectations.

Perhaps Dickens's best-loved work, Great Expectations tells the story of Pip, a young man with few prospects for advancement until a mysterious benefactor allows him to escape the Kent marshes for a more promising life in London. Despite his good fortune, Pip is haunted by figures from his past--the escaped convict Magwitch, the time-withered Miss Havisham, and her proud and beautiful ward, Estella--and in time uncovers not just the origins of his great expectations but the mystery of his own heart. A powerful and moving novel, Great Expectations is suffused with Dickens's memories of the past and its grip on the present, and it raises disturbing questions about the extent to which individuals affect each other's lives. This edition reprints the definitive Clarendon text. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's new introduction ranges widely across critical issues raised by the novel: its biographical genesis, ideas of origin and progress and what makes a gentleman, memory, melodrama, and the book's critical reception. The book includes four appendices and the fullest set of critical notes in any mass-market edition.