She was the basis for a character of the same name in Dickens's 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge and is generally considered to have inspired the eponymous bird from Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 poem "The Raven".

Her remains passed through the hands of several collectors after Dickens's death and are now on display in the Rare Book Department of the Parkway Central Library in Philadelphia.

[1] After he announced to his neighbours that he had a fancy for ravens, Grip was discovered in a "modest retirement" in London by Frederick Ash and given to Dickens.

"[4][1] Grip was treated as a family pet in the Dickens household, allowed to roam freely like a cat or a dog.

[8] In a letter to Angela Burdett-Coutts, Dickens related how the bird had also buried several raw potatoes, a brush, and a large hammer that was thought to have been stolen from a carpenter.

[10] She terrorized the Dickens family dog, a Newfoundland, stealing his dinner from under him, and once gave a "nasty bite" to the man who tended the horses.

[10] Dickens recalled Grip's death in a letter to Daniel Maclise: "On the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but soon recovered, walking twice or thrice along the coach-house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed 'Halloa old girl' (his favourite expression) and died.

"[12]Dickens himself entertained suspicions that Grip had been a victim of intentional poisoning, singling out a "malicious butcher" and the publisher Charles Knight.

[13] Dickens wrote about his notion to portray Grip as a character in his book Barnaby Rudge in a 28 January 1841 letter to the artist George Cattermole.

"[12][14] Edgar Allan Poe wrote two reviews of the serialised novel for Graham's Magazine, first in May 1841 after three instalments had been published[10] and then in February 1842 following the conclusion of the novel.

Poe enjoyed the character of Grip, but considered Barnaby Rudge to be a failed murder mystery and characterised the denouement as "exceedingly feeble and ineffective".

Poe wrote "The Raven" two years after Dickens visited Philadelphia and "both met and groused about copyright infringement" according to La Salle University lecturer Edward G.

[15] The similarities between Poe's raven and Dickens's character of Grip drew commentary from many reviewers and literary scholars.

"[21] Following Grip's death in 1841, Dickens had a taxidermist[a] stuff her, treat her with arsenic,[22] and mount her on a branch in a glass case measuring 27" x 25".

One paper reported that: "The value of this ornithological specimen at any commonplace second-hand shop might have been five shillings or so, but the particular stuffed raven sold on Saturday was only to be obtained by the purchaser for a sum of one hundred and twenty guineas.

Grip then came into the hands of second-hand bookstore owner Walter Thomas Spencer before being purchased by Ralph Tennyson Jupp, a collector of Dickensiana.

When Gimbel died in 1970, his collection of Poe ephemera, including Grip, was left to the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

[3] Grip spent 20 years in storage at the Free Library of Philadelphia, tucked away in a closet underneath a canvas labelled "The Most Famous Bird in the World".

She sits across the hallway from a mounted headstone for Dick, another pet bird, a canary, of Dickens who was buried at Gads Hill Place in Kent.