Nicholas Nickleby (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

~ Charles Dickens (Author), Mark Ford (Editor, Contributor) "It has afforded the Author great amusement and satisfaction, during the progress of this work, to learn from country friends and from a variety of..." (more)
Key Phrases: great bespeak, comic countryman, poor dear papa, Sir Mulberry, Miss La Creevy, Miss Squeers (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Nicholas Nickleby, a gentleman's son fallen upon hard times, must set out to make his way in the world. Along the way various older, money-grubbing villains attempt to injure him. Eventually, with the assistance of kind patrons, he and his family achieve economic security and a happy home. Sounds rather trite, doesn't it? Not with characters written by Dickens (Hard Times, Audio Reviews, LJ 5/1/98). Schoolmaster Squeers would make a fine poster boy for child abusers. Ralph Nickleby's initial desire to injure Nicholas gradually develops into a full-blown obsession. Then there are the kind Cheeryble brothers, the gentle, much-abused Smike, and a host of other friends who provide comic relief. Martin Jarvis does an outstanding job of reading this book. His ingenues sound young (a frequent problem area for male readers) while his villains are deliciously evil. The only problems are with the abridgment. In several places, choppy editing has left brief, disconnected scenes and/or character cameos without relevance to the abridged tale. Still, this is a charming presentation and a wonderful bridge to a classic book. Recommended for public and academic libraries.AI. Pour-El, Iowa State Univ., Ames
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

(in full The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby) Novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in 20 monthly installments by "Boz" from 1838 to 1839 and published in book form in 1839. An early novel, this melodramatic tale of young Nickleby's adventures as he struggles to seek his fortune in Victorian England resembles The Pickwick Papers in structure, although not always in tone. Throughout, comic events are interspersed with Dickens' moving indictment of society's ill treatment of children and the cruelty of the educational system. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 864 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (November 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140435123
• ISBN-13: 978-0140435122
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #274,133 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most entertaining novels ever, March 8, 2003

By	JR Pinto (New Jersey) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

I read criticisms of this book that it is not one of Dickens' best. For me, it is up there with Great Expectations and David Copperfield as one of his most enjoyable novels (A Christmas Carol is a short story).

The social axe that Dickens had to grind in this story is man's injustice to children. Modern readers my feel that his depiction of Dotheboys Academy is too melodramatic. Alas, unfortunately, it was all too real. Charles Dickens helped create a world where we can't believe that such things happen. Dickens even tell us in an introduction that several Yorkshire schoolmasters were sure that Wackford Squeers was based on them and threatened legal action.

The plot of Nicholas Nickleby is a miracle of invention. It is nothing more than a series of adventures, in which Nicholas tries to make his way in the world, separate himself from his evil uncle, and try to provide for his mother and sister.

There are no unintersting characters in Dickens. Each one is almost a charicature. This book contains some of his funniest characters.

To say this is a melodrama is not an insult. This is melodrama at its best. Its a long book, but a fast read.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The good, the bad, and the extremely ugly, May 1, 2004

By	A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Dickens is as much a social critic as a storyteller in "Nicholas Nickleby," which basically pits the noble young man who gives the novel its title against his wickedly scheming rich uncle Ralph in a grand canvas of London and English society. At the beginning of the novel, Nicholas's father has just died, leaving his family destitute, and Uncle Ralph, a moneylender (specifically, a usurer) and a venture capitalist of sorts, greedy and callous by the requirements of the story, reluctantly feels obligated to help them, and does so by securing for Nicholas a position as headmaster's assistant at a school for boys in Yorkshire, and for Nicholas's sister Kate a job as a dressmaker for a foppish clown named Mr. Mantalini, while Nicholas and Kate's scatterbrained mother is left in her room to mutter incoherent reminiscences about random events in her life.

This Yorkshire school, called Dotheboys Hall, turns out to be little more than a prison in the way it is run by its headmaster, an improbably cruel cyclops named Wackford Squeers who badly mistreats and miseducates the students. Now, historical records indicate that while Squeers may be an exaggeration, his school is definitely not, Dickens intending to warn his readers of the day that some such places were indeed that bad. The duration at Dotheboys Hall constitutes only a small portion of the novel, but Squeers and his grotesque family reappear throughout the rest of the story like gremlins who are always causing bad things to happen to our hero.

Nicholas's fortunes after escaping from Dotheboys Hall with Smike, a particularly abused older boy whom Squeers had worked like a slave, revolve largely around the circumstances of Kate and Uncle Ralph, who is starting to view the young man as a nuisance inclined to interfere in his machinations. Having been vilified by Squeers for his brash conduct at the Hall, Nicholas takes to the road with Smike in tow, where in Portsmouth they meet a thespian named Vincent Crummles who persuades the fugitives to become actors in his theatrical troupe; this episode, the strangest of Nicholas's adventures, seems more than anything else to reflect Dickens's own interest in the theater. Eventually Nicholas returns to London and gets a job as a clerk at a counting-house owned by a pair of merchants, the cheery Cheeryble brothers, where he encounters a beautiful girl in distress who will become a major factor in the final showdown between Nicholas and his uncle.

The supporting characters are numerous and extremely colorful to the point of cartoonishness, such as Miss La Creevy, a talkative spinster and amateur painter; John Browdie, the gruff Yorkshireman whose dialect is so severe he needs a translator; Sir Mulberry Hawk, the arrogant suitor whom Kates tries to rebuff; Newman Noggs, Uncle Ralph's benevolent clerk who helps our hero when he can. In fact, the most curious thing about the characterization in this novel is that its main characters are almost completely devoid of personality; Nicholas and Kate, perhaps being by necessity innocuous paragons of virtue, are practically mere mannequins to whom people talk and things happen. Even the sickly and wretchedly humble Smike, the mystery of whose parentage becomes a part of the plot, does not induce as much pity as Dickens probably intended because he seems trapped in a story that doesn't really want him except as a device to expose even more of Uncle Ralph's villainy.

There is much to like in "Nicholas Nickleby": The prose is finely detailed, the satire of various types of characters is on target, the humor is sharp -- there is a particularly funny and suspenseful scene with an unexpected outcome in which Nicholas dispatches Newman to discover the identity of the mysterious beautiful girl. And there is much not to like: The plot coincidences are ridiculously contrived in typical Dickensian fashion; the drama is manipulative, designed to cheer the reader all the more when the author comes to rescue the heroes from their despair and hopelessness; the sentimentality is overwhelming -- by the end "Nicholas Nickleby" becomes so saccharine it makes "David Copperfield" look like "Blood Meridian." But Dickens remains eminently readable because of his flair for portraying and celebrating human oddity in all its varieties, his knowledge that life is all about taking the bad with the good, and his sense that fiction is all about maximizing the contrast.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quintessential Dickens - satire, comedy, social commentary!, May 12, 2005

By	Paul Weiss (Dundas, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Fresh from his success on "Oliver Twist" as a political satirist of note, Dickens turns his sights toward the abuse of Yorkshire schools - a national disgrace - in which children were effectively abandoned for a fee. Neglect, physical abuse, malnourishment, cold, and ill health were endemic. This political attack becomes the setting for an expansive tale of the Nickleby family and their ongoing struggle against the evil of their uncle Ralph. The usual collection of sub-plots, comedy and Dickensian characters rounds out a lengthy but fulfilling read that nobody will be sorry they started.

Paul Weiss