The Old Curiosity Shop--------------------------------------------------...holding her solitary way among a crowd of wild, grotesque companions,the only pure, fresh, youthful object in the throng.' 'Little Nell'cares for her grandfather in the gloomy surroundings of his curiosityshop. Reduced to poverty the pair flee London, pursued by the grotesqueand vindictive Quilp. In a bizarre and shifting kaleidoscope of eventsand characters the story reaches its tragic climax, an ending thatfamously devastated the novel's earliest readers. Dickens blends naturalisticand allegorical styles to encompass both the actual blight of Victorianindustrialization and textual echoes of Bunyan, the Romantic poets,Shakespeare, pantomine and Jacobean tragedy. Contrasting youth andold age, beauty and deformity, innocence and cynicism, The Old CuriosityShop is a compelling mixture of humour and brooding meance. This editionuses the Clarendon text, the definitive edition of the novels of CharlesDickens, and includes the original illustrations.