The only token of identity left by his dying mother to Oliver Twist - born in the workhouse, and orphaned at birth - is stolen.

Spending his early childhood in neglect and near starvation Oliver joins the workhouse at nine, and has early taste of humiliation, injustice, torture, and hunger, as he switches jobs and places from undertaker's boy to trainee pickpocket until he finds shelter, as a wounded child burglar, with Mrs Maylie and her protegee, Rose, by whom he is kindly treated and brought up.

But can he escape Fagin, the brutal gang leader of a gang of thieves?

Can he discover his parentage? When and how shall the long spell of Oliver's hardship and unhappiness come to an end?