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THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP is a massive volume, over 450 pages and more than 200,000 words. It is the fourth novel by English author Charles Dickens; being one of his two novels (the other being Barnaby Rudge) published along with short stories in his weekly serial Master Humphrey's Clock, from 1840 to 1841. It was so popular that New York readers reputedly stormed the wharf when the ship bearing the final instalment arrived
The was printed in book form by CHAPMAN AND HALL of London.in 1841. Queen Victoria read the novel that year and found it "very interesting and cleverly written".
The plot follows the journey of Nell Trent and her grandfather, both residents of The Old Curiosity Shop in London, whose lives are thrown into disarray and destitution due to the machinations of an evil moneylender and the grandfather's addiction to gambling.
Probably the most widely repeated criticism of Dickens is the remark reputedly made by Oscar Wilde that "one must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.” The scene of Nell's death is not actually part of the text, however. Of a similar opinion was the poet Algernon Swinburne, who commented that "a child whom nothing can ever irritate, whom nothing can even baffle, whom nothing can ever misguide, whom nothing can ever delude, and whom nothing can ever dismay, is a monster as inhuman as a baby with two heads.”
The Irish leader Daniel O'Connell famously burst into tears at the finale, and threw the book out of the window of the train in which he was travelling.
The novel has been adapted to more than a dozen films, television, opera, and radio.
THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP
$16.50