PENGUIN CLASSICS : PENGUIN CLASSICS NICHOLAS NICKLEBY – CHARLES DICKENS-HABLOT K. BROWNE-MARK FORD-MARK FORD

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