The lack of hygiene and the inhumane treatment of pupils was a source of great scandal at the time. It was Dickens’s intention to reveal to the public the horrors of Yorkshire’s boarding schools, where parents would dump their unwanted children for indefinite periods. Nicholas is appalled by the treatment of the school’s orphans, in particular a frail and simple-mined boy called Smike. Nicholas’s adventures take him to Dotheboys Hall, home of the brutal schoolmaster Wackford Squeers – one of Dickens’s greatest grotesques. Forms: Prose: Genre: Victorian literature: Literary period: Victorian: This work is featured in: Discovering Literature: Romantics & Victorians. Through his sharply drawn characters and compelling plots, Dickens created an evocative and enduring image of the Victorian underclass, tempering poverty with hope and wringing humour from despair.Ĭharles Dickens’s novel, Nicholas Nickleby, was first published in monthly parts between March 1838 and September 1839. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. In doing so, his writings smoothed the path of reform. Dickens was not only a master of storytelling he was also foremost among 19th-century novelists in confronting his middle-class readers with the human face of social deprivation. This is the handwritten draft of ‘Nicholas Nickleby’, penned by Charles Dickens around July 1838.
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