The Old Curiosity Shop tells the story of Nell Trent, a beautiful and virtuous young girl of "e;not quite fourteen"e;. ... Secretly obsessed with ensuring that Nell does not die in poverty as her parents did, her grandfather attempts to provide Nell with a good inheritance through gambling at cards. In the early 1970s, it was a bookstore specializing in Charles Dickens's books. Hidden away on Portsmouth Street just south of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Old Curiosity Shop today is a retailer of high-end shoes and is still open for business, as it has been for over 500 hundred years.