American Toby Jug Museum 

Little Nell candle snuffer produced by Beswick of Longton, England, circa 1983 for the Dickens House Museum. Nelly Trent, known as Little Nell, is the central character from Charles Dickens' novel "The Old Curiosity Shop". She lives with her gambling-addicted, mentally infirm grandfather, the owner of the Old Curiosity Shop. When he falls into the clutches of Daniel Quilp, the evil dwarf who lends money to the old man, she helps him escape London. The hardships endured during their wanderings are too much for the delicate Nell and she dies in a quiet village where she and her grandfather had gained employment. Allegedly Dickens wept when he wrote Nell's death scene. The character Nell exemplifies the blend of social realism and fairy tale common in Dickens' work. An adolescent whose maturation is unnaturally accelerated by the challenge of managing her grandfather's unstable, manipulative and self-destructive behavior, Nell is nonetheless enshrined as "Little Nell," a pure "child" whose death brings those around her closer to Christian spirituality.