ABSTRACT
THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP, CHARLES DICKENS’S (1812-1870) FOURTH novel, was first published as a weekly serial between 1840 and 1841. The Old Curiosity Shop of the title was in the notorious Clare Market slum-now the site of the London School of Economics. In his childhood Dickens was all too familiar with poverty and the slums of London. His father, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, was transferred from Chatham Dockyard to London in 1822. Two years later he was imprisoned for debt and Charles Dickens, then 12 years old, left school and was sent to ‘work in a boot-blacking factory. His childhood experiences were unknown to his readers until after his death, but they undoubtedly were a major influence on his views on social reform and on the world he portrayed in his writing.
