The Old Curiosity Shop

‘Alone in the midst of all this lumber and decay, and ugly age, the beautiful child in her gentle slumber’

Little Nell Trent lives in the quiet gloom of the old curiosity shop with her ailing grandfather, for whom she cares with selfless devotion. But when they are unable to pay their debts to the loathsome Quilp, the shop is seized and they are forced to flee, thrown into a shadowy world in which there seems to be no safe haven. Dickens’s portrayal of the innocent, tragic Nell made The Old Curiosity Shop an instant bestseller that captured the hearts of the nation, even while it was criticized for its sentimentality. Yet alongside the story’s pathos are some of Dickens’s greatest comic and grotesque creations: the ne’er-do’well Dick Swiveller, the mannish lawyer Sally Brass, the half-starved ‘Marchioness’ and the lustful, demonic Quilp himself.

This edition, based on the original text of 1841, contains an introduction discussing the various contrasting themes of the novel and its roots in Dickens’s own personal tragedy, with prefaces to the 1841 and 1848 editions, a chronology, notes and the original illustrations produced for the serial version.