Nicholas Nickleby: Introduction by John Carey (Everyman's Library Classics Series) - Hardcover

Dickens, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679423079 ISBN 13: 9780679423072

Publisher: Everyman's Library USA, 1993

Synopsis

Charles Dickens had an understanding of mid-Victorian society second to none, and genius and energy massive enough to make the absurdities and terrors of that society come alive on the page. Nicholas Nickleby, with its episodes of chicanery in finance and education, and the dramatic intensity with which it tells the story of its openhearted young protagonist and its frightening villain, the magnificently rendered Ralph Nickleby, represents Dickens at his clear-eyed, indignant, and mesmerizing best.

When Nicholas Nickleby is left penniless by the death of his father, he appeals to his Uncle Ralph to help him and his mother and sister. But Ralph conceives a violent hatred of the young man, and his schemes of persecution haunt Nicholas through a series of picaresque adventures, including a job as a tutor at a horrific school for unwanted boys run by the cruel Wackford Squeers and a stint as a member of the eccentric Crummles family theater troupe. Without shying away from the grimmer aspects of the world Nicholas encounters on his path to eventual happiness, the story remains one of Dickens's most high-spirited and exuberant.

This edition reprints the original Everyman preface by G. K. Chesterton and includes thirty-nine illustrations by Phiz.

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

'I love Dickens but I'm particularly fond of Nicholas Nickleby... It's one of those books I can just read and reread' Nigel Havers

Edition details

• Publisher: Everyman's Library USA
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0679423079
• ISBN 13: 9780679423072
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 914