Dear classics reader,
In this week’s vaulted gothic chamber you will find:
Our penultimate discussion of The Old Curiosity Shop and the death of Little Nell;
Birthday wishes to Irmgard Keun;
The week’s new classics – including Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette;
A preview of coming attractions;
A report from our conversation about The Call of the Wild at the Hatchards Classics Book Club last night;
And our first discussion of The Age of Innocence – with a note on the mysterious Julius Beaufort.
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The Old Curiosity Shop (17 of 18)
This month we’ve read another four issues of Dickens’s Master Humphrey’s Clock – and our penultimate instalment of The Old Curiosity Shop. Here are my thoughts:
Oscar Wilde famously quipped that ‘one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.’ What was your reaction?
‘She was dead. There, upon her little bed, she lay at rest. The solemn stillness was no marvel now. She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God, and waiting for the breath of life; not one who has lived and suffered death. . . . She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead. . . . She was dead, and past all help, or need of it.’
Yes, poor Nell is dead – and I found it affecting. I don’t think Wilde was being quite fair: the scene is sentimental, maudlin even, but nonetheless sad, especially as we have seen it coming for such a long time – not just in recent chapters, but as long ago as the very first, when this illustration by Samuel Williams foreshadowed George Cattermole’s illustration to the seventy-first.
For interest, the village where Nell dies is said to be based on Tong in Shropshire. (Here it is on the map.)
Dickens’s grandmother, Elizabeth Ball, grew up in the area: she was born at Claverley, ten miles away, and worked as the housekeeper at Tong Castle before marrying William Dickens in 1781. Dickens is said to have written this last section of the book while staying in the Harp Hotel, in the nearby village of Albrighton.
The church at Tong, St Bartholomew’s, is indeed a ‘very aged, ghostly place’. It is a large 15th century building, formerly a collegiate church overseen by a non-monastic community of clergy. It has such a large collection of ornate monuments it is sometimes called the ‘Westminster Abbey of the Midlands’
In the late nineteenth century, the popularity of The Old Curiosity Shop led increasing numbers of tourists to visit Tong until, in 1910, the local postmaster and verger, George Bowden, installed a ‘grave of Little Nell’ and began charging visitors a shilling to visit it.
Bowden also created a false entry for Little Nell (No. 280) in the parish burial register, but it was later exposed as a fake because he had used his own post-office ink
Little Nell’s grave has moved site several times over the last hundred years, but you can still visit it today.
Perhaps the most famous story about The Old Curiosity Shop is that crowds gathered at the docks in New York shouting, ‘Is Little Nell dead?’, as the ships sailed in with copies of Master Humphrey’s Clock issue No.44.
The legend is unconfirmed, but the book was undoubtedly popular on both sides of the Atlantic. After The Old Curiosity Shop was published in book form on 9 March 1841, Dickens sold 100,000 copies. In his lifetime it was his best-selling novel.
This week I look forward to reading ‘Chapter the Last’ of The Old Curiosity Shop as well as ‘Master Humphrey, from His Clock-Side in the Chimney Corner’, both of which appeared in Master Humphrey’s Clock, issue No.45, on 6 February 1841.
If you don’t have a copy of Master Humphrey’s Clock to hand, you can access the text here for free. The section we’ll be discussing next week starts,
‘I was musing the other evening upon the characters and incidents with which I had been so long engaged . . .’
and ends,
‘. . . the lamp being trimmed, the fire well stirred and burning brightly, the hearth clean swept, the curtains closely drawn, the clock wound up, we entered on our new story.’
We will discuss the final instalment of The Old Curiosity Shop next Friday 13th.
Here are links to our previous Old Curiosity Shop posts:
The Schedule (14 March 2025)
Charles Dickens (28 March)
0. Forster’s Life of Dickens (4 April)
1. Master Humphrey’s Clock No.1 – and Gog and Magog (11 April)
2. Master Humphrey’s Clock No.2 – and G. K. Chesterton (18 April)
3. Master Humphrey’s Clock No.3 – and Edgar Allan Poe (25 April)
4. Master Humphrey’s Clock No.4 – and the Old Curiosity Shop (2 May)
6. Master Humphrey’s Clock No.6 – and St. Dunstan-in-the-West (16 May)
7. Master Humphrey’s Clock No.7 – and Jack Bamber’s Tale (23 May)
9. Chapters 6-8 – and Master Humphrey, from His Clock-Side in the Chimney Corner (20 June)
10. Chapters 9-16 – and Punch and Judy (18 July)
11. Chapters 17-24 – and Old Giants and Dwarfs (15 August)
12. Chapters 25-32 – and Jarley’s Wax-Work (12 September)
13. Chapters 33-39 – and Sampson and Sally Brass (10 October)
14. Chapters 40-47 – and the Black Country (7 November)
15. Chapters 48-55 – and Daniel Maclise (5 December)
16. Chapters 56-65 – and Quilp’s figure-head (9 January)
Happy Birthday Irmgard Keun
In other news, today was Irmgard Keun’s birthday.
Keun grew up in Cologne, where she trained as an actress. Her first two novels – Gilgi, One of Us (1931) and The Artificial Silk Girl (1932) – were instant bestsellers, but then the Nazis blacklisted her books in 1933. She attempted to sue the Gestapo for loss of earnings before leaving both Germany and her Nazi-supporting husband in 1936.
She spent the next two years travelling around Europe with the writer Joseph Roth, an experience that inspired perhaps her greatest work, Child of All Nations (1938). When her suicide was erroneously reported in 1940, Keun managed to smuggle herself back into Nazi Germany, spending the rest of the war living in Cologne under a false name.
After the war she wrote satirical pieces for magazines and raised her daughter. She suffered increasingly from alcoholism and spent six years on a psychiatric ward before being ‘rediscovered’ by Stern magazine in 1977.
Child of All Nations by Irmgard Keun (1938)
Kully knows some things you don’t learn at school. She knows the right way to roll a cigarette and pack a suitcase. She knows that cars are more dangerous than lions. She knows you can’t enter a country without a passport or visa. And she knows that she and her parents can’t go back to Germany again – her father’s books are banned there. But there are also things she doesn’t understand, like why there might be a war in Europe – just that there are men named Hitler, Mussolini and Chamberlain involved. Little Kully is far more interested where their next meal will come from and the ladies who seem to buzz around her father.
[UK] Penguin Modern Classics | 208 pages | translated by Michael Hofmann
What’s new this week?
This week saw several classics in new editions or first English translation, such as Pirkko Saisio’s Backlight, the second volume of Saisio’s award-winning Helsinki trilogy. (Lowest Common Denominator, the first volume, came out in the UK in August 2025.) Operation Heartbreak is the only novel by the cabinet minister, diplomat and historian, Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich.
Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper (1950)
William Maryngton has just one dream: to fight for his country, as his late father did. Devoted and honourable, he knows no fear – yet somehow, he always misses the battle; too young for the First World War, too old for the Second. Operation Heartbreak follows Willie’s life, through youthful idealism, love affairs and disappointed hopes, until, finally, he gets the chance to make a difference. Duff Cooper’s bittersweet novel, inspired by the real events of Operation Mincemeat, is a poignant tale of dreams of glory, and what it means to be true.
[UK] Penguin Classics | 160 pages
[US] McNally Editions | 184 pages | afterword by Michael Hofmann
Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette (1977)
Aimée is drop-dead gorgeous, razor-sharp, and lethally efficient. A killer with a cool head and a taste for chaos, she arrives in the backwater town of Bléville – a festering stew of grudges, corruption, and small-town rot – ready to make a killing. It’s a game she’s played before: stir up trouble, pit the locals against one another, then disappear with blood on her hands and money in her pocket. But this time, something breaks and the game turns on her. Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the crime novel into a weapon of satire and stylish mayhem. Fatale is his bloodiest, funniest, and most brilliantly unhinged work: a riot of revenge, farce, and gleeful destruction.
[UK] Vintage Classics | 112 pages | translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
[US] NYRB Classics | 98 pages | translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith | afterword by Jean Echenoz
The Search Warrant by Patrick Modiano (1997)
One winter night in 1941, a Jewish girl runs away from her Paris boarding school. Stumbling across her disappearance listed in an old newspaper, Patrick Modiano finds himself propelled on a quest to exhume her fate. His search will go on to last a decade. Little more will be found, just fragments of a lost family history, a sense of the dark streets of occupied Paris, Dora’s name on a list of those sent to Auschwitz. And the spectre of Modiano’s own troubled past, from which he can no longer look away.
[UK] Vintage Classics | 144 pages | translated by Joanna Kilmartin
[US] University of California Press | 108 pages | translated by Joanna Kilmartin | published as Dora Bruder
Backlight by Pirkko Saisio (2000)
Teenaged Pirkko can’t decide which she hates most: God, her communist father, or her growing breasts. Grandpa has moved into the room long promised to her, and Mother, overworked and distant, tries to keep the peace between her headstrong daughter and husband. It’s 1960s Finland and Pirkko has fun getting into trouble. That is, until her teacher suggests she might have what it takes to be a real writer. Then the historic summer of 1968 arrives, which Pirkko spends working at a Swiss orphanage where no one understands her and, as much as her family drive her mad, she’s homesick for the first time.
[UK] Penguin International Writers | 272 pages | translated by Mia Spangenberg
[US] Two Lines Press | 280 pages | translated by Mia Spangenberg
The book descriptions above are taken from the publishers’ online blurbs.
Coming Attractions
Future monthly read-alongs
For a sneak preview of our upcoming monthly read-alongs, you can take a peak here.
Wuthering Heights
Last week I was lucky enough to watch a preview screening of Emerald Fennell’s new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights.
And on Wednesday this week I recorded a conversation about the film with the lovely Harriet Evans (author of The Treasures) and Rhianna Dhillon for the Penguin Podcast – I will share the link next Friday, once the episode is available.
Our year-long read-along 2026
We are reading The Brothers Karamazov over the whole of 2026: twelve volumes in twelve months, January to December.
Join us! There’s still plenty of time to catch up. Here is the full reading schedule – and all our Brothers Karamazov posts will be gathered here.
We discussed Book One last week – and our discussion of Book Two is in two weeks’ time on Friday 20 February.
All the Brothers Karamazov posts are accessible to all subscribers for free, but if you would like to view or contribute to the conversation in the comment sections, you will need a paid subscription.
As ever, if you – or anyone you know – can’t afford a paid subscription, just let me know and I’ll send a gift subscription.
Annual book subscription
And if you’re enjoying our read-alongs, why not treat yourself to the Hatchards Classic Book Club annual book subscription?
You (or a friend) can receive all the books we read each month here on Read the Classics, beautifully gift-wrapped and delivered to your door, anywhere in the world, as well as a year’s complimentary subscription to Read the Classics, so you can choose to read along with us, if you wish.
To find out more, follow this link or email Hatchards directly: subscriptions@hatchards.co.uk
The Call of the Wild Book Club
Talking of Hatchards, last night we had an excellent discussion of The Call of the Wild in the bookshop. Here’s my report:
And here are links to all our The Call of the Wild posts:
The Schedule (12 December)
Jack London (2 January)
0. The Klondike Gold Rush (9 January)
1. The Overland Mail Dog Teams (16 January)
2. George Orwell and animal protagonists (23 January)
If you would like to come to our next Hatchards Classics Book Club discussion, you’d be very welcome! We will be discussing Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence on Thursday 5th March.
We meet downstairs at Hatchards (187 Piccadilly, London) on the first Thursday of every month at 6.30pm – tickets cost £5 with a free Hatchards Reward Card and include a glass (or two) of wine.
The Age of Innocence (1 of 4)
And finally, this week we’ve read the first ten chapters of The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Here are my thoughts:
