Dickensalong 2023 : The Old Curiosity Shop

[Piggywaspushed]

Come along and join me in this year's Dickens readalong.

We have chosen The Old Curiosity Shop which was originally published by Dickens across 88 weeks in his won periodical.

Obviously 88 weeks is a bit much for our modern concentration spans and multitasking minds , so I propose an 8 month read. There are 73 chapters in total, not split into volumes or books (thanks for this Dickens!!) but I found little stars every few chapters so think these indicate breaks:

January - Chapters 1- 8
February - Chapters 9- 16
March - Chapters 17 - 26
April - Chapters 27 - 36
May - Chapters 37 - 45
June - Chapters 46-53
July - Chapters 54 - 63
August - 64 - end

I hope that's all OK. It's not as long as some of the others we have done so 8 instalments seems to work.

All welcome - old curiosities, and new!

Shall we have a little break and start NN in October? Gives us all time to get sorted.

I'll work out instalments as Dickens are very short.

Thanks for the videos, Piggy!
Yes, October would be fine to start NN.

Thanks Piggy, will try and watch those later. Happy to start NN in September or October, whatever everyone else prefers.

The Old Curiousity Shop isn’t really what I expected - given the title I thought the shop would feature a lot more than it does! Like others I got a bit bored of Nell and Grandfather’s endless tramping round the countryside, although I did like some of the characters they met along the way. Some other memorable characters in the London sections as well.

Did anyone else know before reading that Nell was going to die? While I knew nothing else about the plot, I did know that because of the Oscar Wilde quotation ‘one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing’. I was therefore expecting the death scene to be much more over the top than it was.

I only knew because of ill advised Googling. I think Tiny Tim is far more treacly.

I liked Katie's idea that all the characters are 'curiosities'.

It was the only thing I knew about TOCS, the death of Little Nell. Like you, Chessie, I was baffled that the shop didn't feature beyond the very earliest chapters. And the mysterious narrator who set the scene in chapter one and was never heard from again. Most peculiar.

That's a nice way of looking at the characters in this book as 'curiosities' isn't it. A cabinet of curious people. The Cabinet of Curious People. The Very Pious Plod. What else could have been a better title? 😄Answers on a postcard please.

Did we ever find out Nell's full name? I don't think so.

According to this Wikipedia site, the narrator for the first few chapters is the single gentleman who turns up later and is revealed to be the grandfather’s younger brother. That had passed me by too Fuzzy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nell_Trent

It’s all rather unclear, isn’t it? I think, to be charitable, Dickens eventually worked up a decent story around some good characters - Dick Swiveller, Kit, even the loathsome Quilp - without ever quite landing on a convincing plot. Or much of a plot at all. I still didn’t quite work out why Quilp was so evilly fixated on the grandfather and Nell until I looked it up on Wikipedia 😂

Oh! I need to go and look up Wikipedia 😅thanks Chessie and Terpsichore!* *

I don't think the Wikipedia theory about the narrator is necessarily provable. Various things I've read seem to just think it's a device Dickens dropped because he cba with it! It's quite early in his career so he is still messing about with voice and style.

Surely Victorians reading the instalments must have wondered where the narrator went!

And when do we get told she is Nell Trent??

I don't think this was in the book at all! The explanation for the narrator is neat and seems to fit, but there's nothing in the text that links the appearance of the single gentleman to the narrator of the first chapters, as far as I can remember.

Did you see that they made a grave for Little Nell in Shropshire and it became a tourist attraction?!

I didn’t recall the narrator being mentioned again either but just assumed I missed it when I read Wikipedia. Maybe it’s them not me!

I think I would have noticed it. I'm inclined to agree with Piggy tthat it's a device that was suggested post publication.

I'll go back to the book and check if 'Nell Trent' was part of the inscription on her headstone. Or perhaps it was mentioned as part of Grandad's family history.

It’s in Chapter 6 - Quilp says ‘here’s Nelly Trent’, but that’s the first time it’s mentioned as her name.

Thank you Terpsichore! I wouldn't have found it!

Oh!

According to this, the narrator, Master Humphrey, IS the unnamed single gentleman, but this was revealed in a later serial rather than in the book itself. So none of us missed anything. All a bit odd but sounds like TOCS was a bit of a spin off from the original serial.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Humphrey#:~:text=Master%20Humphrey%20is%20the%20narrator,originally%20published%20in%20that%20serial.

It's rather disjointed, isn't it? I'm going with Terpsichore's comment* *that Dickens eventually spun a decent story around a few characters in spite of the book not really having a decent plot. That works for me. I like the notion that the mysterious narrator is the single gentleman. Dickens could have worked on it a bit better though. It's a bit slipshod! Must do better next time ;)

I might try for Nickleby as I have at least started it

Here is a link for the next readalong!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4903775-dickensalong-2023-2024-nicholas-nickleby

Thanks @Piggywaspushed ! I’ll dig out my battered and well-loved old Penguin copy.