The Old Curiosity Shop

The sensational bestselling story of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, seems to belong less to the history of the Victorian novel than to folklore, fairy tale, or myth. 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.

Set in

• ★
  London · United Kingdom
  ★ primary
• ★
  Tong · United Kingdom

  Village where Nell finds peace and dies
  ★ primary
• Birmingham · United Kingdom

  Industrial town where Nell shelters by the furnace
• Wolverhampton · United Kingdom

  Town where Nell faints and is rescued by the schoolmaster