'The novel has everything: an absorbing melodrama with a supporting cast of heroes villains
and eccentrics set in a London where vast wealth and desperate poverty live cheek-by-jowl'
Jasper Rees The Times When Nicholas Nickleby is left penniless after his father's death he
appeals to his wealthy uncle to help him find work and to protect his mother and sister. But
Ralph Nickleby proves both hard-hearted and unscrupulous and Nicholas finds himself forced to
make his own way in the world. His adventures gave Dickens the opportunity to portray an
extraordinary gallery of rogues and eccentrics: Wackford Squeers the tyrannical headmaster of
Dotheboys Hall a school for unwanted boys the slow-witted orphan Smike rescued by Nicholas
the pretentious Mantalinis and the gloriously theatrical Mr and Mrs Crummels and their daughter
the 'infant phenomenon'. Like many of Dickens's novels Nicholas Nickleby is characterised by
his outrage at cruelty and social injustice but it is also a flamboyantly exuberant work
whose loose haphazard progress harks back to the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and
Henry Fielding. In his introduction Mark Ford compares Nicholas Nickleby to eighteenth-century
picaresque novels and examines Dickens's criticism of the 'Yorkshire schools' his social
satire and use of language. This edition includes the original illustrations by 'Phiz'
Dickens's original preface to the work a chronology and a list of further reading. For more
than seventy years Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the
English-speaking world. With more than 1 700 titles Penguin Classics represents a global
bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust
the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished
scholars and contemporary authors as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning
translators.
