Perhaps no other famous character from Charles Dickens, the most popular English writer of the 19th century, evoked such sympathy in readers as Nelly Trent from The Old Curiosity Shop—the embodiment of kindness, gentleness, and selflessness. Left homeless, little Nell and her grandfather, the owner of an old antique shop, are forced to experience all the injustice and cruelty of the world. The grotesque embodiment of the world's evil is the moneylender Quilp, a deformed dwarf, who possesses nothing human in his appearance or soul. This fantastical, gothic, fairytale-like, sentimental, realistic, partly tragic, partly comic story will forever remain one of Dickens's most beloved books worldwide.