Nicholas Nickleby (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Dickens, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140435123 ISBN 13: 9780140435122

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1999

Synopsis

'A revelation ... as well as being sympathetic to the plight of children, it is hilarious' A. N. Wilson

The hero of Dickens's flamboyantly exuberant novel, Nicholas Nickleby, is left penniless after his father's death and forced to make his own way in the world. His adventures give Dickens the opportunity to portray an extraordinary gallery of rogues and eccentrics: Wackford Squeers, the tyrannical headmaster of Dotheboys Hall; the tragic orphan Smike, rescued by Nicholas; and the gloriously theatrical Mr and Mrs Crummle and their daughter, the 'infant phenomenon'. Nicholas Nickleby is characterized by Dickens's outrage at social injustice, but it also reveals his comic genius at its most unerring.

Edited with an Introduction by Mark Ford

About this title

Review:

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-jow --Jasper Rees - The Times

Nicholas Nickleby was a revelation. Here was a school - Dotheboy's Hall, with its grotesque headmaster, Wackford Squeers - which was even worse than the prison camp to which my poor innocent parents had confined me! The story of Dotheboy's Hall seemed horribly familiar - the beatings, the bad food. But here was something to which even a child could respond. As well as being sympathetic to the plight of the children, the author was hilarious --A.N Wilson

Dickens is huge - like the sky. Pick any page of Dickens and it's immediately recognizable as him, yet he might be doing social satire, or farce, or horror, or a psychological study of a murderer - or any combination of these --Susannah Clarke

Book Description:

Charles Dickens' much-loved classic novel, read by Martin Jarvis

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0140435123
• ISBN 13: 9780140435122
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 816
• Editor: Ford Mark
• Illustrator: Browne Hablot K.