Nell and Her Grandfather

“Can you suppose there's any harm in looking as cheerful and being as cheerful as our poor circumstances will permit?"
Nell is a 14-year-old orphan girl who lives with her caring grandfather in his little shop of odds and ends. Though Nell doesn’t complain, she is lonely and friendless. What she doesn’t realise is that her grandfather is trying to secure her an inheritance through gambling. And when he is unable to pay his debts to the cruel moneylender Daniel Quilp, they are evicted from the shop.
The heart-breaking story of Nell and Her Grandfather was an instant bestseller in Dickens’ time, and Queen Victoria called it “very interesting and cleverly written.”


Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English author, social critic, and philanthropist. Much of his writing first appeared in small instalments in magazines and was widely popular. Among his most famous novels are Oliver Twist (1839), David Copperfield (1850), and Great Expectations (1861).