In his most haunting and powerful novel, Charles Dickens captured the hearts of a nation with Little Nell and the poignant story of her "tragedy of sorrows."  Hounded by poverty from their home, Nell is uprooted from a secure and pleasant childhood and cast into a world where evil takes many shapes.  Pursued by the lecherous and malignant Quilp, the young innocent and her elderly grandfather embark on a journey from the dark heart of the city to the countryside in search of the peace and tranquility that is destined to elude them.The Old Curiosity Shop is a story of contrasts: youth and old age, beauty and deformity, freedom and restraint.  Expansively comic, sentimentally tragic, it is sometimes fairytale and sometimes myth.
