The Old Curiosity Shop
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| The Old Curiosity Shop | |
| Author | Charles Dickens |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Chapman and Hall |
| Publication date | 1840 to 1841 originally as a serial |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and Paperback) and Audio Book |
| Pages | 742 (U.K. hardback edition) / 608 (U.K. paperback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-19-812493-7 (U.K. hardback edition) / ISBN 0-14-043742-8 (U.K. paperback edition) |
The Old Curiosity Shop is a novel by Charles Dickens. The plot follows the life of Nell Trent and her grandfather, both residents of The Old Curiosity Shop in London.
The Old Curiosity Shop was one of two novels (the other being Barnaby Rudge) which Dickens published in his weekly serial Master Humphrey's Clock, which lasted from 1840 to 1841. The Old Curiosity Shop was printed as a separate book in 1841.
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[edit] Plot summary
The Old Curiosity Shop tells the story of Nell Trent, a beautiful and virtuous young girl of 'not quite fourteen'. Both her parents having died of poverty, she lives with her mother's father (whose name we never learn) in his shop of curiosities. Her grandfather loves her dearly, and Nell does not complain, but she lives a lonely existence without friends of her own age. Her only friend is Kit, an honest young lad who works at the shop, and whom she is teaching to write. Unbeknownst to Nell, her grandfather is obsessed with ensuring that Nell does not die in poverty as her mother did, and is attempting to make Nell a good inheritance by winning at cards. He keeps these nocturnal activities a secret, but borrows heavily from the evil Daniel Quilp, a dwarf, in order to raise new capital. In the end, he gambles away what little money they own, and Quilp seizes the opportunity to take possession of the shop and make Nell's and her grandfather's lives a misery. Her grandfather suffers a breakdown, which leaves him bereft of his wits. Nell and her grandfather run away to the country to live as beggars, travelling into the Midlands of England.
Convinced that the old man has stored up a fortune for Nell, her wastrel brother Frederick convinces the good-natured but easily-led Dick Swiveller to help him track Nell down so that Swiveller can marry her and the two can share Nell's supposed inheritance. To this end they join forces with Quilp, who knows full well that there is no fortune, but sadistically chooses to 'help' in order to enjoy the misery it will inflict on all concerned. Quilp begins to try to track Nell down, but the fugitives are not easily discovered. To keep Dick Swiveller under his eye, Quilp arranges for him to be taken as a clerk by Quilp's lawyer, Mr. Brass. At the Brass firm Dick befriends the mistreated servant maid and nicknames her 'the Marchioness'. Nell, having fallen in with a number of characters, some villainous and some kind, succeeds in leading her grandfather to safe haven in a far off village (identified by Dickens as Tong, Shropshire), but this has come at a considerable cost to Nell's health.
Meanwhile, Kit, having lost his job at the curiosity shop, has found new employment with the kind Mr and Mrs Garland. Here he is contacted by a mysterious 'single gentleman' who is looking for news of Nell and her grandfather. The 'single gentleman' and Kit's mother go after them unsuccessfully, and encounter Quilp, who is also hunting for the runaways. Quilp forms a grudge against Kit and has him framed as a thief. Kit is sentenced to transportation. However, Dick Swiveller proves Kit's innocence with the help of his friend the Marchioness. Quilp is hunted down and dies trying to escape his pursuers. At the same time a coincidence leads Mr Garland to a knowledge of Nell's whereabouts, and he, Kit, and the single gentleman (who turns out to be the younger brother of Nell's grandfather) go to find her. Sadly, by the time they arrive, Nell has died as a result of her arduous journey. Her grandfather, already mentally infirm, refuses to admit she is dead and sits every day by her grave waiting for her to come back, until he dies himself a few months later.
The events of the book seem to take place in about 1825. In chapter 29 Miss Monflathers refers to the death of Lord Byron, who died in 1824. When the inquest rules (incorrectly) that Quilp committed suicide, his corpse is ordered to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through its heart, a practice banned in 1826. And Nell's grandfather, after his breakdown, fears that he shall be sent to a madhouse, and there chained to a wall and whipped; these practices went out of use after about 1830. In Chapter 13 the lawyer Mr. Brass is described as "one of Her Majesty's attornies [sic]", putting him in the reign of Queen Victoria, which began in 1837, but given all the other evidence, and the fact that Kit, at his trial, is charged with acting 'against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King', this must be a lapsus calami.
[edit] Framing Device
Originally the conceit of the story was that Master Humphrey was reading it aloud to a group of his friends, gathered at his house around the grandfather clock in which he eccentrically kept his manuscripts. Consequently, when the novel begins, it is told in the first person, with Master Humphrey the narrator. However, Dickens soon changed his mind about how best to tell the story, and abandoned the first-person narrator after chapter three. Once the novel was ended, Master Humphrey's Clock added a concluding scene, where Master Humphrey's friends (after he has finished reading the novel to them) complain that the 'single gentleman' is never given a name; Master Humphrey tells them that the novel was a true story, that the 'single gentleman' was in fact Master Humphrey himself, and that the events of the first three chapters were fictitious, intended only to introduce the characters. This was Dickens' after-the-fact explanation of why the narrator disappeared and why (if he was their near relation) he gave no sign in the first three chapters of knowing who they were. It is a clumsy device, and at least one editor thinks 'it need not be taken seriously.' [1]
[edit] Characters in The Old Curiosity Shop
[edit] Major characters
- Nell (Nelly) Trent
- Nell's grandfather
- Christopher 'Kit' Nubbles
- Daniel Quilp
- Richard 'Dick' Swiveller
- The single gentleman (Master Humphrey)
[edit] Other characters
- Mr Sampson Brass, an attorney (what would now be called a solicitor) of the Court of the King's Bench. A grovelling, obsequious man, he is an employee of Mr Quilp, and at his urging he frames Kit for robbery.
- Miss Sally Brass, Mr Brass's sister and clerk; she is the real authority in the Brass firm.
- Mrs Jarley, proprietor of a travelling waxworks show, who takes in Nell and her grandfather out of kindness.
- Frederick Trent, Nell's worthless older brother, who is convinced that his grandfather is secretly wealthy.
- Mr Garland, a kind-hearted man, father of Abel Garland and employer of Kit.
- The 'small servant', Miss Brass's maidservant. Dick Swiveller befriends her and, finding that she does not know her age or name or parents, nicknames her 'The Marchioness' and later gives her the name Sophronia Sphynx. (In the original manuscript it is made explicit that the Marchioness is in fact the illegitimate daughter of Miss Brass, possibly by Mr Quilp, but in the published version Dickens only strongly hints at it.)
- Isaac List, a professional gambler.
- Joe Jowl, another professional gambler.
- Mr James Groves, keeper of the Valiant Soldier, a public house.
- Mr Chuckster, the dogsbody of the notary Mr Witherdon, who employs Mr Abel Garland.
- Mr Marton, a poor schoolmaster. He befriends Nell and later meets her on the roads when she is ill; he takes her to an inn and pays for the doctor, and then takes her and her grandfather to live with him in the distant village where he has been appointed parish clerk.
- Thomas Codlin, proprietor of a travelling Punch and Judy show.
- Mr Harris, called 'Short Trotters', the puppeteer of the Punch and Judy show.
- Barbara, the maidservant of Mr and Mrs Garland.
- Jacob Nubbles, a toddler, Kit's younger brother.
- Miss Monflathers, haughty proprietess of a girl's school in Warwick.
[edit] Literary significance and criticism
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Probably the most widely-repeated criticism of Dickens is Oscar Wilde's remark that 'One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears...of laughter.' (In fact there is no such scene, since Nell's death takes place off stage.)
[edit] Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science
A shop named 'The Old Curiosity Shop' is found at 13-14 Portsmouth Street, London in amongst the London School of Economics. The building dates back to the sixteenth century, but this name was added after the novel was released, as it was thought to be the inspiration for Dickens' description of the antique shop. The small town of Shifnal in Shropshire was a favourite of Charles Dickens, and it is possible that he based the buildings in "The Old Curiosity Shop" on those in Shifnal. However this has never been confirmed by a credible source and should be taken as hearsay rather than historical evidence. The heavily industrialised city where Nell faints and is rescued by the school master is Birmingham. The city where Nell and her Grandfather work at Jarley's Waxworks is Coventry. The village where they finally find peace and rest and where Nell dies is Tong, Shropshire. Also, there is a shop in Broadstairs called The Old Curiosity Shop, and Charles Dickens had a house in Broadstairs
[edit] Adaptations for the cinema, TV, radio and theatre
There were several silent movie adaptations of the novel. The first talkie version was a 1934 British movie. It was serialised for television by the BBC in 1960. A musical version (released under the title "Mr. Quilp" in its native Britain) was released in 1971, but was a flop, because the age of the conventional British musical had passed. An adaptation for BBC Radio 4 was first broadcast in 1998. The production starred Tom Courtenay as Quilp. In 1995 Tom Courtenay and Peter Ustinov starred in a Disney 'made for television'[4] adaptation as Quilp and the Grandfather, with Sally Walsh[5] as Nell. A television film adaptation was produced by ITV and broadcast in the UK on 26 December 2007.[6]
[edit] Release details
Major editions
- 1840 – 1841, UK, Chapman and Hall, Pub date (88 weekly parts) April 1840 to November 1841, Serial as part of Master Humphrey's Clock
- 1841, UK, Chapman and Hall (ISBN not used), Pub date ? ? 1841, Hardback (first edition)
- 1995, USA, Everyman's Library ISBN 0-460-87600-7, Pub date ? ? 1995, Paperback
- 1997, UK, Clarendon Press (Oxford University Press) ISBN 0-19-812493-7, Pub date 13 November 1997, Hardback. This is considered the definitive edition of the book.
- 2001, UK, Penguin Books Ltd ISBN 0-14-043742-8, Pub date 25 January 2001, Paperback (Penguin Classic)
[edit] External links
- Map of Nell and her grandfather's journey from London through the Midlands to journey's end in Tong, Shropshire. [1]
Online editions
- The Old Curiosity Shop, available at Project Gutenberg.
- The Old Curiosity Shop – complete book in HTML one page for each chapter.
- The Old Curiosity Shop – Searchable HTML version.
- The Old Curiosity Shop – Easy to read HTML version.
- The Old Curiosity Shop – Downloadable .mp3s by chapter.
- The Old Curiosity Shop – Full book available at Google Book Search.
[edit] References
- ^ The editor of the Penguin Classic Books edition.
- ^ Gissing, The Immortal Dickens
- ^ http://caxton.stockton.edu/reviewingdickens/stories/storyReader$9
- ^ The Old Curiosity Shop (1995) (TV)
- ^ Sally Walsh (II)
- ^ How ITV aims to lure viewers with quality drama - Media, News - Independent.co.uk
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![[1]](http://charlesdickenspage.com/images/Little-Nells-Journey2.jpg){kind=link}