On the subject of Dickens as Super-Celeb

[junediamanti]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "ladyramkin2000" 
<ladyramkin2000 at y...> wrote:
> Little Nell (full name Eleanor Trent) is indeed the heroine of The 
> Old Curiosity Shop.  The village where she dies and is buried is 
> supposed to be Tong, in Shropshire.  So obsessed were people with 
the 
> book when it first came out that someone actually inscribed her 
name 
> in the burial register of the local church and the verger used to 
> make the odd shilling by showing her grave to pilgrims.  I thought 
> you would like to have this piece of quite useless information.
> 
> Sylvia (a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles)

The death of Nell Trent in the Old Curiousity Shop is regarded as one 
of the great "weepy scenes" in Dickens and indeed the whole of 
Victorian literature.

Oscar Wilde said "It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the 
death of Little Nell" and this quote has been re-hashed more times 
than I care to remember.

June