內容簡介

Charles Dickens’s story of selfless Little Nell and her ailing grandfather and their persecution by the magnificently malignant villain Quilp has seized the imaginations and wrung the hearts of generations of readers.

Dickens’s talent was superabundant in every way: in his dramatic force and his massive productivity, in his almost surreal comic power, in his compassion and thirst for justice, and in the imaginative pressure he brought to bear on even the most incidental of his characters. The delightfully various figures in The Old Curiosity Shop range memorably from jaunty Dick Swiveller and his little half-starved Marchioness to the hard-hearted siblings Sampson and Sally Brass, jovial Mrs. Jarley, devoted Kit Nubbles, the hunchbacked Daniel Quilp, and, of course, tragic Little Nell herself. Dickens’s depiction of the fate of his main characters is famously harrowing and unfailingly suspenseful, but not the least of its charms is that it is embellished with a supporting cast of figures as grotesque and colorful as anything in the Old Curiosity Shop itself.
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This edition reprints the original Everyman’s preface by G. K. Chesterton and features seventy-five illustrations by Cattermole and Phiz.

　　我倒是很高興，我素來不愛遠距離的散步，特彆是在寒冷的下午。對我來說，在陰冷的黃昏迴傢實在可怕，手指和腳趾都凍僵瞭，還得聽保姆白茜的責罵，弄得心裏很不痛快，而且自己覺得體質不如伊麗莎、約翰和喬奇安娜·裏德，又感到低人一等。

　　上麵提到的伊麗莎、約翰和喬奇安娜·裏德，這時候都在休憩室裏，正簇擁在他們的母親周圍，她斜靠在爐邊的沙發上，心愛的兒女都在身旁（這忽兒既不爭吵，又不哭鬧），看上去很是快活。她沒讓我和他們在一起；她說她很遺憾，不得不叫我離他們遠一點；她真的不能把隻給知足快樂的小孩的那些特權給我，除非是白茜告訴瞭她，而且還要她自己親眼看到，我確實是在認認真真地努力培養一種更加天真隨和的性情，一種更加活潑可愛的態度——大概是更輕快、更坦率、更自然的一種什麼吧。

彆人推薦的書，很不錯，值得看

那一天不可能去散步瞭。不錯，我們早上已經在片葉無存的灌木林中逛瞭一個鍾頭；但是，自從吃午飯的時候起（如果沒有客人，裏德太太是很早吃午飯的），鼕日的凜冽寒風就送來瞭那樣陰沉的雲和那樣透骨的雨，這就不可能再在戶外活動瞭。

　　層層疊疊的猩紅帷幔擋住瞭我右邊的視綫，左邊卻是明亮的玻璃窗，它保護著我，讓我受不到陰鬱的11月天氣的侵襲，卻又不把我與外界隔絕。在翻書頁的當兒，我偶爾眺望一下鼕日午後的景色。遠處，隻見一片白茫茫的霧靄；附近，卻是濕漉漉的草坪和風雨襲擊下的灌木，連綿不斷的雨讓一陣經久不息的淒淒寒風驅趕著狂馳而過。

　　我重又低頭看書，看的是比維剋①的《英國禽鳥史》。一般說來，這本書的文字部分我不大愛看，但是有幾頁導言，我雖說是個孩子，卻也不能完全當作空白翻過去。那幾頁導言寫到海鳥常去的地方；寫到隻有海鳥居住的“孤寂的岩石和海岬”；寫到挪威的海岸，從最南麵的林訥斯內斯角②或者納斯到北角③，沿著海岸綫，點綴著許多海島——那裏，北冰洋捲起巨大的鏇渦，圍繞著世界盡頭光禿淒涼的海島咆哮，大西洋的驚濤駭浪激蕩起落，注入風雨交加的赫布裏底群島④。

狄更斯神作，被低估的作品。

其它都好，就是價太高瞭點

　　“白茜說我乾瞭什麼？”我問。