The Old Curiosity Shop (Unabridged) [Unabridged Fiction‪]‬

Like Charles Dickens' other early novels, The Old Curiosity Shop was a huge success, even eclipsing The Pickwick Papers. The melodramatic saga of the flight of Little Nell and her grandfather captured the public's attention, so much so that people would wait in long lines for the release of the next installment of the saga. For the character of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, Dickens drew on a tragedy in his own life, the death at the age of seventeen of his sister-in-law Mary Hogarth. "The desire to be buried next her is as strong upon me now ... and I know (for I don't think there ever was love like that I bear her) that it will never diminish," he would write, five years later.