Literary Significance and Criticism
Probably the most widely-repeated criticism of Dickens is the remark reputedly made by Oscar Wilde that 'One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears...of laughter.' (Nell's deathbed is not actually described, however). Of a similar opinion was the poet Algernon Swinburne, who called Nell "a monster as inhuman as a baby with two heads."
The Irish leader Daniel O'Connell famously burst into tears at the finale, and threw the book out of the window of the train in which he was travelling.
The hype surrounding the conclusion of the series was unprecedented; Dickens fans were reported to storm the piers of New York City, shouting to arriving sailors (who might have already read the last instalment in the United Kingdom), "Is Little Nell alive?" In 2007, many newspapers claimed the excitement at the release of the last volume The Old Curiosity Shop was the only historical comparison that could be made to the excitement at the release of the last Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The Norwegian author Ingeborg Refling Hagen, is allegedly said to have buried a copy of the book in her youth, stating that nobody deserved to read about Nell, because nobody would ever understand her pain. She compared herself to Nell, because of her own miserable situation at the time.
Read more about this topic: The Old Curiosity Shop
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