The old curiosity shop

The Old Curiosity Shop was expanded from a short tale to save Dickens's failing periodical Master Humphrey's Clock.

New material in this edition - the first to make full use of discarded and cancelled passages, as well as Dickens's surviving working notes and proofs - reveals the strain imposed on him by the unexpected demands of weekly serialization.

This is most obvious as he approaches the death of Little Nell, in whose fate both he and his readers becameemotionally involved.