ABSTRACT
More than a thousand of Charles Dickens’s readers stood on the docks in New York in 1841 waiting for the shipment of the London periodical Master Humphrey’s Clock, which contained the latest installment of The Old Curiosity Shop. These readers feared, quite literally, for the life of the heroine with an intensity and to an extent often recalled in discussions of the connections between writers, readers, and texts. When the ship neared the dock one called out to those on board, “Is Little Nell dead?”1 Like readers in England, Americans were thoroughly engaged in Dickens’s maudlin tale, and tearfully sympathized with Little Nell as if she were one of their own children. Sadly, Little Nell had perished back in England, and nations mourned. Later Oscar Wilde would declare that no one could read of the death of Little Nell without laughing, a verdict our age would likely agree with, but in 1841 the joke was not yet apparent.
