The novel was originally published in monthly instalments in the magazine Bentley's Miscellany, from February 1837 to April 1839.
It was originally intended to form part of Dickens's serial, The Mudfog Papers.
George Cruikshank provided one steel etching per month to illustrate each instalment.
The novel first appeared in book form six months before the initial serialisation was completed, in three volumes published by Richard Bentley, the owner of Bentley's Miscellany, under the author's pseudonym, Boz.
It included 24 steel-engraved plates by Cruikshank.
The Old Curiosity Shop tells the story of Nell Trent, a beautiful and virtuous young girl of not quite fourteen.
An orphan, she lives with her maternal grandfather (whose name is never revealed) in his shop of odds and ends.
Her grandfather loves her dearly, and Nell does not complain, but she lives a lonely existence with almost no friends her own age.
Her only friend is Kit, an honest boy employed at the shop, whom she is teaching to write.
Secretly obsessed with ensuring that Nell does not die in poverty as her parents did, her grandfather attempts to provide Nell with a good inheritance through gambling at cards.
He keeps his nocturnal games a secret, but borrows heavily from the evil Daniel Quilp, a malicious, grotesquely deformed, hunchbacked dwarf moneylender.
In the end, he gambles away what little money they have, and Quilp seizes the opportunity to take possession of the shop and evict Nell and her grandfather.
Her grandfather suffers a breakdown that leaves him bereft of his wits, and Nell takes him away to the Midlands of England, to live as beggars.
Convinced that the old man has stored up a large and prosperous fortune for Nell, her wastrel older brother, Frederick, convinces the good-natured but easily led Dick Swiveller to help him track Nell down, so that Swiveller can marry Nell and share her supposed inheritance with Frederick.
To this end, they join forces with Quilp, who knows full well that.
Throne Classics Oliver twist & the old curiosity shop, paperback/charles dickens
