Reading Order
Old Curiosity ShopCharles Dickens Old Curiosity Shop Reading Order
Charles Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41) was the Victorian sensation — the novel whose serialized publication caused crowds to gather at New York docks waiting for the next shipment of magazines, and whose heroine Little Nell's fate prompted a grief in its original readers that has since been the object of both genuine sympathy and literary comedy. The novel's combination of extreme pathos and extreme comedy (in the dwarf Quilp, one of Dickens's most energetic villains) captures the Victorian emotional range at its most unguarded.
Where to start
The Old Curiosity Shop
Complete Old Curiosity Shop Book List
- 1Buy
The Old Curiosity Shop
Charles Dickens·1841·Start here — the Victorian sensation; the novel's combination of little Nell's journey and Quilp's malevolent energy represents Dickens at his most unrestrained and most characteristic of the early style. - 2Buy
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens·1838·Dickens's earlier portrait of childhood innocence threatened by social evil — the essential companion to The Old Curiosity Shop in its portrait of a child whose virtue is the measure of the world's cruelty. - 3Buy
The Pickwick Papers
Charles Dickens·1837·Dickens's debut novel — the direct precursor to The Old Curiosity Shop in its combination of comedy and sentiment, and the work that established the episodic serial structure that The Old Curiosity Shop would use to generate its enormous popular success. - 4Buy
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett·1911·Burnett's novel about a solitary, difficult child who discovers a hidden garden and is transformed by it — the Edwardian heir to the tradition of child-protagonist novels that The Old Curiosity Shop helped establish; less Victorian in its darkness but sharing the conviction that children's inner lives are morally serious subjects. - 5Buy
Bleak House
Charles Dickens·1853·The mature Dickens novel that most successfully combines the pathos and the social criticism of The Old Curiosity Shop in a unified form; where The Old Curiosity Shop lets the sentiment and the comedy run separately, Bleak House fuses them in the double narrative of Esther Summerson and the omniscient present-tense narrator.
Old Curiosity Shop — Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Victorian readers cry when Little Nell died?
The death of Little Nell — which occurs about three-quarters through the novel after a long journey of flight and hardship — was one of the great emotional events of Victorian reading culture. Dickens serialized the novel in weekly parts, and readers had followed Nell's journey for months before her death; the combination of her absolute innocence, the extended nature of her suffering, and Dickens's deliberate management of suspense (the weekly installments ending repeatedly on ambiguous notes) created an intensity of investment that modern readers rarely experience. Oscar Wilde's famous remark about needing a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell is the most celebrated expression of the subsequent backlash.
Who is Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop?
Daniel Quilp — the malevolent dwarf who pursues Little Nell and her grandfather — is one of Dickens's most energetic and disturbing creations. Physically grotesque, sexually threatening, and possessed of apparently limitless malice and energy, Quilp exists in almost total contrast to Nell; where she is all gentleness and patience, he is all appetite and cruelty. He is also, paradoxically, one of the most comic characters in the novel — his delight in his own wickedness has a performative quality that makes him more like a Shakespearean Vice than a realistic villain. He is the character that most readers remember most vividly from The Old Curiosity Shop, long after Nell's pathos has faded.
Is The Old Curiosity Shop sentimental?
Yes — by any modern standard, The Old Curiosity Shop is extremely sentimental, and the novel has suffered more than almost any other Dickens for it. F.R. Leavis and many subsequent critics found the sentimentality about Nell dishonest. But Victorian sentimentality was not simply bad taste: it expressed a genuine set of values about childhood innocence, female virtue, and the moral authority of the suffering of the helpless. Reading The Old Curiosity Shop as a historical document of what Victorian emotional life actually valued is more rewarding than reading it against modern standards of psychological realism.
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.