The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby [Abridged] (Penguin English Library) - Softcover

Dickens, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140431136 ISBN 13: 9780140431131

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1978

Synopsis

Nicholas Nickleby is a kind-hearted and honest young man who struggles to eke out a living to support his poverty stricken mother and sister. In order to earn his keep, Nicholas takes a teaching position at a deprived boarding school full of poor and hungry students, where under the rule of the cruel and corrupt one-eyed Wackford Squeers, his honourable nature chafes against the brutal regime. But in this depraved environment, sometimes even friendship and compassion can flourish..."Nicholas Nickleby" is the captivating story of one man's journey to fight a school's brutal and tyrannical rule, and a lesson in the consequences for those who conspire to bring about his downfall. This special edition features an exclusive introduction by the highly-acclaimed writer Peter Ackroyd, one of Britain's leading literary biographers.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation,but also the horror of the infamous debtors’ prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and “slave” factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years’ formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney’s clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.

Michael Slater is an emeritus professor at Birkbeck College, London, and past president of the Dickens Fellowship and the Dickens Society of America.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1978
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140431136
• ISBN 13: 9780140431131
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 976