In describing the journey Nell and her grandfather take through the English countryside Dickens creates a dream landscape in which no place names are used. The village where Nell dies is thought to be Tong, Shropshire, a place Dickens had visited. A wreath is still placed every year outside St. Bartholomew's church at the supposed grave of Little Nell.
1923 map showing possible routes taken by Nell and her grandfather. From 'A Dickens Atlas' by Albert A. Hopkins and Newbury Frost Read.
Astley's Theatre
Kit takes his mother to Astley's theatre on the Surry side of the Thames on Westminster Bridge Road. Phillip Astley, credited as a pioneer of the modern circus, opened his theatre in 1774. His show featured a ring and displays of horsemanship.
| The Old Curiosity Shop - Published in weekly parts Apr
1840 - Feb 1841 Read it online | Buy it at Amazon.com | Video | Illustrations 
Illustrated by George Cattermole
and Phiz, with a single illustration
each from Samuel Williams and Daniel Maclise. This installment novel,
published in Master Humphries
Clock, was so popular that its weekly sales rose to a hundred
thousand. It tells the story of Nelly Trent and her grandfather as
they wander the English countryside, north of London, trying to evade
Daniel Quilp, probably Dickens' most evil villain. Nell's grandfather
has borrowed money from Quilp to support a gambling habit and has
lost everything, including the curiosity shop. As the conclusion of
the story neared Nell is exhausted from the travel and lack of food.
Dickens was inundated with letters begging him to spare Nell's life.
With the last installment arriving by ship, crowds in New York shouted
from the pier "Is Little Nell Dead?" The original for Nell is believed to be Dickens' sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, who died suddenly at age 17 in 1837 and for whom Dickens still grieved. |
| Principal Characters: Nelly Trent Nell's Grandfather Fred Trent Daniel Quilp Kit Nubbles Dick Swiveller The Marchioness Sampson Brass Sally Brass Sophy Wackles Mrs Jarley Codlin and Short The Single Gentleman |
Old Curiosity Shop Links: The Dickens Page The Victorian Web Bartleby.com Wikipedia - The Old Curiosity Shop |
Death-Bed of Little Nell
Dickens' instructions to George Cattermole for the illustration The Death-Bed of Little Nell:
"The child lying dead in the little sleeping room, which is behind the open
screen. It is winter-time, so there are no flowers; but upon her breast
and pillow, and about her bed, there may be strips of holly and berries,
and such free green things. Window overgrown with ivy. The little boy who
had that talk with her about angels may be by the bedside, if you like it
so; but I think it will be quieter and more peaceful if she is alone. I
want it to express the most beautiful repose and tranquility, and to have
something of a happy look, if death can...I am breaking my heart over this
story, and cannot bear to finish it." Leaving London
Dickens describes the scenery along the road Nell and her grandfather take on their way out of London.
Damp rotten houses, many to let, many yet building,
many half-built and mouldering away- lodgings, where it would be hard to
tell which needed pity most, those who let or those who came to take-children,
scantily fed and clothed, spread over every street, and sprawling in the
dust- scolding mothers, stamping their slipshod feet with noisy threats
upon the pavement-shabby fathers, hurrying with dispirited looks to the
occupation which brought them 'daily bread' and little more-mangling-women,
washer-women, cobblers, tailors, chandlers, driving their trades in parlours
and kitchens and back room and garrets, and sometimes all of them under
the same roof-brick-fields skirting gardens paled with staves of old casks,
or timber pillaged from houses burnt down, and blackened and blistered by
the flames-mounds of dock-weed, nettles, coarse grass and oyster-shells,
heaped in rank confusion-small dissenting chapels to teach, with no lack
of illustration, the miseries of Earth, and plenty of new churches, erected
with a little superfluous wealth, to show the way to Heaven.At length these streets becoming more straggling yet, dwindled and dwindled away, until there were only small garden patches bordering the road, with many a summer house innocent of paint and built of old timber or some fragments of a boat, green as the tough cabbage-stalks that grew about it, and grottoed at the seams with toad-stools and tight-sticking snails. To these succeeded pert cottages, two and two with plots of ground in front, laid out in angular beds with stiff box borders and narrow paths between, where footstep never strayed to make the gravel rough.
Then came the public-house, freshly painted in green and white, with tea-gardens and a bowling green, spurning its old neighbour with the horse-trough where the waggons stopped; then, fields; and then, some houses, one by one, of goodly size with lawns, some even with a lodge where dwelt a porter and his wife. Then came a turnpike; then fields again with trees and hay-stacks; then, a hill, and on the top of that, the traveller might stop, and-looking back at old Saint Paul's looming through the smoke, its cross peeping above the cloud (if the day were clear), and glittering in the sun; and casting his eyes upon the Babel out of which it grew until he traced it down to the furthest outposts of the invading army of bricks and mortar whose station lay for the present nearly at his feet-might feel at last that he was clear of London.
 April 1840 July 1840 Travels by train to Devon to visit his parents in the house he bought for them principally to get his father out of London, where his constant borrowing was an embarrassment to Dickens. August 1840 Visits Bevis Marks, in the city, to look for a house for Sampson Brass, a character in The Old Curiosity Shop. January 1841 Begins writing Barnaby Rudge February 1841 Son Walter Landor Dickens born |
