Al-Warraq Library does not host book files; it takes you to the copy at the original source. Public-domain status differs from country to country, so check the law where you live before downloading or republishing the book. Do you hold rights in this work? Request its removal
When his father dies penniless, nineteen-year-old Nicholas Nickleby, with his mother and sister Kate, turns for help to his rich uncle Ralph, a cold-hearted…
When his father dies penniless, nineteen-year-old Nicholas Nickleby, with his mother and sister Kate, turns for help to his rich uncle Ralph, a cold-hearted moneylender, who sends him to teach at Dotheboys Hall, a Yorkshire school run by the brutal, one-eyed Wackford Squeers, where unwanted boys are starved and beaten. Nicholas rebels, thrashes Squeers and escapes with Smike, a broken young drudge, and they join a travelling theatre company before returning to London to protect Kate from his uncle's schemes.
Context and significance
Charles Dickens visited Yorkshire schools under a false name before writing the novel, published in 1838 and 1839, and his portrait of Squeers helped bring such schools to an end. Full of comedy, including the theatrical Crummles family, it was his third novel, after Oliver Twist. See his life.
About the author
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) worked in a boot-blacking factory as a boy while his father was in a debtors' prison, and poverty and wronged childhood run through his novels, from Oliver Twist to the largely autobiographical David Copperfield.