Originally serialized from 1838 to 1839, Dickens' sprawling third novel stands as one of the great comic achievements of the 19th century. It follows the trials and tribulations of young Nicholas, left penniless after his father unexpectedly dies.

Dickens's tale of reform in the boys' schools of Northern England.

The life and loves of Nicholas, the orphaned son of a bankrupt man, form the basis of this complex novel based on the author's recurrent theme of rising from poverty.

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby tells the story of a young man who must support his mother and sister, as his father dies unexpectedly after losing all of his money in a poor investment. Nicholas, his mother and his younger sister, Kate, are forced to give up their comfortable lifestyle in Devonshire and travel to London to seek the aid of their only relative, Nicholas's uncle Ralph, a cold and ruthless businessman. Nicholas starts working as a tutor in an abusive all-boys boarding school, but that is only the beginning of his adventures and misadventures.

When Nicholas Nickleby is left penniless after his father’s death, he appeals to his wealthy uncle to help him find work and to protect his mother and sister. But Ralph Nickleby proves both hard-hearted and unscrupulous, and Nicholas finds himself forced to make his own way in the world. Nicholas’s adventures gave Dickens the opportunity to portray a extraordinary gallery of rogues and eccentrics: 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 novels, 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. Mark Ford’s introduction compares Nicholas Nickleby to eighteenth-century picaresque novels, and examines Dickens’s criticism of the ‘Yorkshire Schools’, his social satire and use of language. This edition also includes the original illustrations by ‘Phiz’, a chronology and a list for further reading.