Originally published in Dickens' weekly serial Master Humphrey's Clock, his heartrending tale of the virtuous orphan Little Nell captivated readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Nell lives with her grandfather, proprietor of the curiosity shop. When the old man loses the shop to the loathsome moneylender Daniel Quilp, he turns them out to roam the countryside as beggars. Some of Dickens' greatest comic and villainous characters move the story to its tragic end.