My teeth fell out shortly after reading this as this is probably the most saccharine novel of mid-Victorian poverty and death that I've ever read.

If you can overlook or ignore the language, vocabulary and grammar use, I feel sure you too would love the tale. The book sold over a million copies, and it is easy to see why such a tale would have appealed to the late Victorians, following on from the social issues first raised by Dickens.A varied cast ranges from night watchman Joe, whose Calvinistic leanings at first prevent him, almost literally, from seeing the light, to well-intentioned gentry and kindly farmers.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. The language, vocabulary and grammar misuse put me occasionally is a state of apoplexy and nearly to tears. I've not read anything with this style of writing or genre, I got the book as a gift, but I did like it and it's something I'll keep for a long time. The children that seem to fairly swarm in this neighbourhood are nearly all of a pale, sallow complexion, and of stunted growth.Nelly, a child of great natural spiritual insight, acts as Benny's moral conscience; when she dies after a street accident, he is in despair. Benny Bates and his wee sister Nelly live in the damp and dung ridden courts of inner city Liverpool (somewhere around Everton I think based on the description - no offence to Evertonians, I'm not inferring your streets are dung ridden now!