Memoirs of a London doll

In a large, dusky room, at the top of a dusky house in one of the dusky streets of High Holborn, there lived a poor doll-maker, whose name was Sprat. He was an extremely small m...

I arrived safe at the doll-shop, and Mrs. Sprat took me out of the basket with her finger and thumb, keeping all her other fingers spread out, for fear of soiling my silver paper.

That evening little Ellen Plummy begged to go to bed earlier than usual. She took me with her, and I had the great happiness of passing the whole night in the arms of my first m...

My life at the pastry-cook’s passed in a very pleasant manner; but not because of the cakes or pastry. For, in the first place, every night was not like Twelfth-night; and as fo...

There were plenty of little odds and ends of silks, and stuffs, and velvets, and muslins, which Ellen had already collected, and which her aunt had told her she might have; and...

My mamma got quite well as soon as my frock and trousers were finished; and whenever she was allowed to go out with her aunt she took me with her. The girl whose sheet had been...

Our house was in Hanover Square, a few doors from the Queen’s Concert Rooms. There happened to be a morning concert on the first day of my arrival, and as one of the drawing-roo...

I had a narrow escape from a most terrible accident a few days after, of a kind which I shall never forget as long as I live. As it happened at the close of a day on which I saw...

I had the next day a great joy. It was the arrival of a letter from my dear Ellen Plummy, which her brother Thomas had brought and given to one of the housemaids, saying it was...

I have now something more than a narrow escape to relate; for though I did really escape, yet it was not without a dreadful accident, and some injury. It was also the occasion o...

The Newfoundland dog soon found that the smell of my burned clothes and scorched skin was not the same as a broiled bone; and that, in fact, I was not good to eat. But he still...

When Mary Hope and her aunt came again to the portrait painter’s house, he presented me to her with a smiling look. ‘There, Miss Mary,’ said he, ‘you see I have been at work upo...

How long it was before the performance concluded I do not know, as I was in so distressed and confused a state of mind. All I can remember is that I was thrown headlong into a s...

The day approached for the Lord Mayor’s Show. Marco determined that Brigitta should see it; and my pretty Italian mamma determined that I should see it too, so out we went early...

The next events of my life were two pleasures and one pain. The pain was a change of circumstances, and the first pleasure was the possession of a new wardrobe. How could I have...

Lydia Thomson had long been promised to be taken to the next Christmas Pantomime, and the happy day for this had now arrived. All the morning long Lydia was so restless she was...

The moment Columbine entered her room she held me up to a good-natured old lady, who was dressing herself like a scaly green dragon for the last scene, and cried out, ‘Here’s a...