Jenny Wren/Paul McCartney

Jenny Wren is a character from Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens' last completed novel. She is a young girl, physically impaired, who earns a meager living making dresses for dolls while caring for her alcoholic father. Paul McCartney's song, from his 2005 album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, begins with the lines Like so many girls/Jenny Wren could sing. Jenny does sing at different points in the novel and is complimented on it by the character Sloppy, who says, "I've heerd tell that you can sing most beautiful." Despite her difficult circumstances (She saw poverty/breaking up a home), Jenny remains upbeat and positive, in the best tradition of saintly, precocious Dickensian children.