The Old Curiosity Shop

by Dickens, Charles; Page, Norman

• ISBN13: 9780140437423
• ISBN10: 0140437428
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-07-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

This is the first edition to make full use of discarded and canceled passages, as well as Dickens's surviving working notes and proofs. The new material reveals the strain imposed on Dickens by the unexpected demands of weekly serialization. This is most obvious as he approaches the death of Little Nell, in whose fate both he and his readers became emotionally involved.

Author Biography

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation,but also the horror of the infamous debtors’ prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and “slave” factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years’ formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney’s clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.

Table of Contents

A Dickens Chronology	vii
Introduction	xi
Further reading	xxix
A Note on the Text	xxxi
The Old Curiosity Shop	1	(556)
Notes	557