All Program Dates
November 3, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ET
November 17, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ET
December 1, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ET
December 15, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ET
December 29, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ET
January 12, 2026 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ET
Registration
Tuition for this course is $300. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.
Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.
This program is for those 18 and older.
Registration opens for Delancey Society members on Friday, August 22, for Rosenbach members on Friday, August 29, and for the general public on Friday, September 5. Registration opens at 12:00 p.m. ET.
Description
“Oliver Twist has asked for more!” Edward G. Pettit will lead a seminar on one of Charles Dickens’s most popular novels. Oliver is the first child protagonist of any novel, and Dickens recounts Oliver’s adventures from a Poor Workhouse to a dangerous den of London criminals. Originally published as a serial while Dickens was still writing his first episodic novel, The Pickwick Papers Oliver Twist departs from a humorous approach and advances the development of the novel form by bringing his satire and social conscience to bear on such issues as child labor, domestic violence, and the criminal class. We’ll explore this exciting Dickensian world and also grapple with troubling aspects, such as Dickens’s antisemitism in his portrayal of Fagin.
Rosenbach has an extensive collection of etchings and lithographs for the novel—many hand-colored—by George Cruikshank, the original illustrator. We’ll see these as we go along. The serial publication of Oliver Twist lasted for over two years. While we won’t be able to take two years for this course, we will read the novel serially over two-and-a-half months (six sessions) and try to keep it spoiler-free as we proceed.
Sponsor
Reading Dickens’s Oliver Twist with Edward G Pettit is sponsored by Maureen Gibney.
Instructor
Edward G. Pettit is the Sunstein Senior Manager of Digital Initiatives at the Rosenbach and has been presenter for the Biblioventures series since its inception, covering Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre; Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes; Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol; and for 20 months, a serial exploration of Dickens’s first book, The Pickwick Papers. Pettit has also taught many reading courses at the Rosenbach, including those on Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak House, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Dickens’s Christmas books. He is a member of the Dickens Fellowship, the Philadelphia Pickwick Club, and in 2012, was the Charles Dickens Ambassador for the Free Library of Philadelphia’s year-long bicentenary celebration of Dickens’s birth. When not reading, he can be found asking for more.