Waubonsee Community College

The old curiosity shop, with the original illustrations, Charles Dickens ; edited with an introduction by Elizabeth M. Brennan

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 617-619)

illustrations

no index present

fiction

The old curiosity shop

bibliography

37443397

Charles Dickens ; edited with an introduction by Elizabeth M. Brennan

Oxford world's classics

with the original illustrations

Overview: A bestseller that gripped the nation when it was first published, The Old Curiosity Shop is a novel of sharp contrasts: of life and death, youth and age, desire and innocence, humour and villainy. For the character of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, Dickens drew on a tragedy in his own life, the death at the age of seventeen of his sister-in-law Mary Hogarth. Five years later he wrote, 'the desire to be buried next her is as strong upon me now ... and I know (for I don't think there ever was love like that I bear her) that it will never diminish.' The sorrows of Nell and her grandfather are offset by Dickens's creation of a dazzling contemporary world inhabited by some of his most brilliantly drawn characters -- the eloquent ne'er-do-well Dick Swiveller; the hungry maid known as the 'Marchioness'; the mannish lawyer Sally Brass; Quilp's brow-beaten mother-in-law, and Quilp himself, the lustful, vengeful dwarf, whose demonic energy makes a vivid counterpoint to Nell's purity

Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Note on the text -- Chronology of Charles Dickens -- Old Curiosity Shop: -- Dedication -- Preface to the 1841 edition -- Preface to the cheap edition (1848) -- Old Curiosity Shop -- Appendix A: Passages deleted from MS and proofs -- Appendix B: Dickens's number plans and memoranda -- Appendix C: Master Humphrey's Clock, 1840-1841 -- Appendix D: Preface to Master Humphrey's Clock, volume 1 -- Appendix E: Little Nell on stage, 1840-1841 -- Explanatory notes -- Select bibliography