The Old Curiosity Shop

Charles Dickens

Wordsworth Editions, 1995 - Antique dealers - 471 pages

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) and George Cruickshank.

The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), with its combination of the sentimental, the grotesque and the socially concerned, and its story of pursuit and courage, which sets the downtrodden and the plucky against the malevolent and the villainous, was an immediate popular success.

Little Nell quickly became one of Dickens' most celebrated characters, who so captured the imagination of his readers that while the novel was being serialised, many of them wrote to him about her fate.

Dickens was conscious of the 'many friends' the novel had won for him, and 'the many hearts it turned to me when they were full of private sorrow', and it remains one of the most familiar and well-loved of his works.

Contents

• Section 1: 3
• Section 2: 28
• Section 3: 37
• Section 4: 52
• Section 5: 90
• Section 6: 105
• Section 7: 133
• Section 8: 140
• Section 9: 150
• Section 10: 154
• Section 11: 168
• Section 12: 182
• Section 13: 205
• Section 14: 211
• Section 15: 221
• Section 16: 240
• Section 17: 254
• Section 18: 269
• Section 19: 286
• Section 20: 292
• Section 21: 315
• Section 22: 321
• Section 23: 329
• Section 24: 335
• Section 25: 358
• Section 26: 372
• Section 27: 393
• Section 28: 402
• Section 29: 422
• Section 30: 444
• Section 31: 450
• Section 32: 474
• Section 33: 508
• Section 34: 530
• Section 35: 536
• Section 36: 547

About the author

Charles Dickens, perhaps the best British novelist of the Victorian era, was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England on February 7, 1812. His happy early childhood was interrupted when his father was sent to debtors' prison, and young Dickens had to go to work in a factory at age twelve. Later, he took jobs as an office boy and journalist before publishing essays and stories in the 1830s. His first novel, The Pickwick Papers, made him a famous and popular author at the age of twenty-five. Subsequent works were published serially in periodicals and cemented his reputation as a master of colorful characterization, and as a harsh critic of social evils and corrupt institutions. His many books include Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, A Christmas Carol, and A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in 1836, and the couple had nine children before separating in 1858 when he began a long affair with Ellen Ternan, a young actress. Despite the scandal, Dickens remained a public figure, appearing often to read his fiction. He died in 1870, leaving his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Old Curiosity Shop; Wordsworth classics
• Author: Charles Dickens
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, revised
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 1995
• ISBN: 1853262447, 9781853262449
• Length: 471 pages