In this small volume there are presented as complete stories the boy-lives
portrayed in the works of Charles Dickens. The boys are followed only to
the threshold of manhood, and in all cases the original text of the story
has been kept, except where of necessity a phrase or paragraph has been
inserted to connect passages;--while the net-work of characters with which
the boys are surrounded in the books from which they are taken, has been
eliminated, except where such characters seem necessary to the development
of the story in hand.
Charles Dickens was a loyal champion of all boys, and underlying his pen
pictures of them was an earnest desire to remedy evils which he had found
existing in London and its suburbs. Poor Jo, who was always being "moved
on," David Copperfield, whose early life was a picture of Dickens' own
childhood, workhouse-reared Oliver, and the miserable wretches at Dotheboy
Hall were no mere creations of an author's vivid imagination. They were
descriptions of living boys, the victims of tyranny and oppression which
Dickens felt he must in some way alleviate. And so he wrote his novels
with the histories in them which affected the London public far more
deeply, of course, than they affect us, and awakened a storm of
indignation and protest.
Schools, work-houses, and other public institutions were subjected to a
rigorous examination, and in consequence several were closed, while all
were greatly improved. Thus, in his sketches of boy-life, Dickens
accomplished his object.
My aim is to bring these sketches, with all their beauty and pathos, to
the notice of the young people of to-day. If through this volume any boy
or girl should be aroused to a keener interest in the great writer, and
should learn to love him and his work, my labour will be richly repaid.