I started with a book called "HTML in 21 days" or something similar: much along the lines of the "...for Dummies" series.
Actually I have never been too good at learning theory from books, so once I had the basics I moved on by looking at source code to find out how "real life" sites were put together.
The danger of pointing a complete beginner at a lot of online resources is that most have an agenda. And very often newbies are precisely the cannon fodder they are looking for.
http://www.bignosebird.com/ has pointed me the right way at different times. Otherwise it's mostly been typing stuff into Google and wading through all the irrelevancies until I find what I need.