The Old Curiosity Shop

She had been dead two days. They were all about her at the time, knowing that the end was drawing on. She died soon after daybreak.

Grandfather's ruin, flight with Nell, Quilp's pursuit, picaresque journey, and Nell's decline form a child-martyr arc without last-minute rescue, so plot scores 86.

Quilp is my name. You might remember. It's not a long one—Daniel Quilp. You have some influence with my grandfather there. Some, said Mr Quilp emphatically.

Little Nell the innocent, Quilp the grotesque predator, Kit the loyal servant, and Dick Swiveller the redeemed fool form Dickens's gallery at full sentimental power, so cast scores 87.

You are the two men I want, he said, the two men I have been looking for, and searching after! Where are that old man and that child you had with you at the races?

Seventy-three chapters of flight, comic interludes, and mounting illness stretch Victorian serial breadth before the final deathbed crescendo, so pace scores 83.

Although I am an old man, night is generally my time for walking. In the summer I often leave home early in the morning, and roam about fields and lanes all day, or even escape for days or weeks together.

The nocturnal frame, chord passage on human feeling, and Nell's deathbed quiet show Dickens's lyric prose at its most deliberately tearful, so prose scores 89.

There are chords in the human heart—strange, varying strings—which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.

The curiosity shop, Welsh journey, furnace towns, and showman's vans map England's margins as moral landscape for innocence under siege, so world scores 88.

Although I am an old man, night is generally my time for walking. I have fallen insensibly into this habit, both because it favours my infirmity and because I love its light and feel the cheerfulness it sheds upon the earth.

Ch.I's nocturnal narrator immediately establishes tone, mystery, and the confession of habit that frames Nell's story, so hook scores 90.

In the most insensible or childish minds, there is some train of reflection which art can seldom lead, or skill assist, but which will reveal itself, as great truths have done, by chance, and when the discoverer has the least expectation of it.

The child-martyr template with grotesque villain and frame-narrator intimacy influenced Victorian serial fiction and later sentimental death scenes, so innov scores 85.

They had read and talked to her in the earlier portion of the night, but as the hours crept on, she sunk to sleep. They could tell, by what she faintly uttered in her dreams, that they were of her journeyings with the old man.

Nell's death after two days, surrounded by those who loved her, is understated and deliberately devastating without last-minute rescue, so ending scores 88.