e after about 1830. In Chapter 13, the lawyer Mr. Brass is described as "one of Her Majesty's attornies" , putting him in the reign of Queen Victoria, which began in 1837, but given all the other evidence, and the fact that Kit, at his trial, is charged with acting "against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King" (referring to George IV), this must be a slip of the pen.
Master Humphrey's Clock was a weekly serial that contained both short stories and two novels (The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge). Some of the short stories act as frame stories to the novels.
Originally the conceit of the story was that Master Humphrey was reading it aloud to a group of his friends, gathered at his house around the grandfather clock in which he eccentrically kept his manuscripts. Consequently, when the novel begins, it is told in the first person, with Master Humphrey the narrator. However, Dickens soon changed his mind about how best to tell the story, and abandoned the first-person narrator after chapter three. Once the novel was ended, Master Humphrey's Clock added a concluding scene, where Master Humphrey's friends (after he has finished reading the novel to them) complain that the 'single gentleman' is never given a name; Master Humphrey tells them that the novel was a true story, that the 'single gentleman' was in fact Master Humphrey himself, and that the events of the first three chapters were fictitious, intended only to introduce the characters. This was Dickens' after-the-fact explanation of why the narrator disappeared and why (if he was their near relation) he gave no sign in the first three chapters of knowing who they were. It is a clumsy device, and at least one editor thinks 'it need not be taken seriously.'
Dickens' original artistic intent was to keep the short stories and the novels together, and the short stories and the novels were published in 1840 in three bound volumes under the title Master Humphrey's Clock, which retains the original full and correct ordering of texts. However, Dickens himself cancelled Master Humphrey's Clock before 1848, and describes in a preface to The Old Curiosity Shop that he wishes the story to not be tied down to the miscellany it began within. Most later anthologies published the short stories and the novels separately.
Characters in The Old Curiosity Shop
- Nell Trent, the novel's main character. Portrayed as infallibly good and angelic, she leads her grandfather on their journey to save them from misery. She gradually becomes weaker throughout the journey, and although she finds a home with the help of the schoolmaster, she does not recover and dies before her friends in London find her.
- Nell's grandfather, Nell's guardian. After losing both his wife and daughter, he sees Nell as the embodiment of their good spirits. His grandson Fred is seen as the successor to his son-in-law, who he felt unworthy of his daughter. As such, he shows him no affection. He is paranoid about falling into poverty and gambles to try to stave that off; as his money runs out, he turns to Quilp for loans to continue to furnish for Nell the life he feels she deserves. After believing Kit has revealed his secret addiction he falls ill, and is mentally unstable afterwards. Nell then protects him as he had done for her. Although he knows Nell is dead he refuses to acknowledge it,and does not recognise his brother whom he had protected in their childhood. He dies soon after Nell, and is buried beside her.
- Christopher 'Kit' Nubbles, Nell's friend and servant. He watches out for Nell when she is left in the shop alone at night (although she doesn't know he's there)and will 'never come home to his bed until he thinks she's safe in hers'. After Quilp takes over the shop he offers her a place in his house. His mother is concerned about his attachment to Nell and at one point jokes 'some people would say that you'd fallen in love with her', at which Kit becomes very bashful and tries to change the subject. He is later given a position at the Garland's house, and becomes an important member of their househol