Nicholas Nickleby

When Nicholas Nickleby is left penniless after his father?s death, he appeals to his wealthy uncle to help him find work and to prot ect his mother and sister. But Ralph Nickleby proves both hard-hearted and unscrupulous, and Nicholas finds himself forced to make h is own way in the world. Nicholas?s adventures gave Dickens the opportunity to portray a extraordinary gallery of rogues and eccentr ics: Wackford Squeers, tyrannical headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, a school for unwanted boys the slow-witted orphan Smike, rescued by Nicholas and the gloriously theatrical Mr and Mrs Crummle, and their daughter, the ?infant phenomenon?. Like many of Dickens?s nov els, Nicholas Nickleby is characterized by his outrage at cruelty and social injustice, but it is also a flamboyantly exuberant work , revealing Dickens?s comic genius at its most unerring.

• author: Charles Dickens