Her Benny

Product Information

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. Eventually they are compelled to run away from home after one beating too many and are rescued by watchman friend Joe Ragg and the companionable Nanny (like Nana in Peter Pan but not a dog) who continue to keep a watchful eye over them as the roam the streets. My mum has been trying to her me to read this for years but it never appealed to me, embarking on the 59 book challenge with one of the topics "a book your mum loves" I had to choose this one. 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. He scrapes a living running errands in the streets; his beloved but frail sister Nelly, a year younger, sells matches.

Nelly plies her trade like the little match girl selling fusees on around Castle Street and St George's Church. A Liverpool slum boy, blamed for a theft, becomes a farmer in Wales and saves the life of his childhood sweetheart.This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. The children that seem to fairly swarm in this neighbourhood are nearly all of a pale, sallow complexion, and of stunted growth. And those who have occasion to penetrate their dark and filthy recesses are generally thankful when they find themselves safe out again.

If you are able to ignore the moralistic and didactic overtones of each chapter, the narrative is an important tale of the conditions on the streets of Liverpool when there was no Government safety net, healthcare, sanitation or empathy for the disadvantaged .I mean having grown up in liverpool and the surrounding areas I have visited many places within this book and have felt able to immerse myself into what was happening. You can spot the doomed character early on, the right people repent, and because it's non-conformist it's (slightly) more believable than eg Susan Warner.

The police rarely, if ever, venture into this neighbourhood alone, or if one should be so foolish enough to do so, he has generally to pay dearly for his indiscretion. And instantly, seizing a huge poker and waving it in the air, he shouted to the affrighted agent, with a terrible oath. Then raising his voice to a loud pitch the shouted, “Mike, come down here: there’s a chap that ‘as five pun’ in his pocket; let’s collar him quick! We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. The harshness of life and death is brought easily to the minds eye of even a modern reader, and the book is certain to bring more than one tear to the eye of even the most cold hearted of readers.

It became hugely successful, was translated into many languages, [3] and sold over a million copies in the author's lifetime.

The lines that appear as chapter headings seem to be chosen as particularly glaring examples of bad Victorian verse.Although the author is obviously familiar with the conditions suffered by the urban poor, his characters lack psychological realism and illustrate doctrine rather than convince as real people. 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. 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. Benny’s father’s drowning in the dock – gurgles and all – and the scene where Joe invites his docile fellow workers to hear him read the bible are similarly absurd.