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    Nicholas Nickleby
    Nicholas Nickleby
    Nicholas Nickleby
    Audiobook (abridged)7 hours

    Nicholas Nickleby

    Written by Charles Dickens

    Narrated by Anton Lesser

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    One of Dickens’s earlier novels, dating from 1839, Nicholas Nickleby charts the fortunes of an honourable young man who has set out to make his way in the world. Dickens presents his remarkably vivid display of Victorian characters and the life they lead, from the generous to the fated to the crushed. Hope springs eternal, however, and righteous persistence brings rewards. Anton Lesser, the outstanding Dickens interpreter, brings all his narrative expression to bear on this exciting tale.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateFeb 1, 2004
    ISBN9789629544935
    Author

    Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.

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    Reviews for Nicholas Nickleby

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    • 3/5
      it always seems a little pretentious to rate a true classic. I'll just say that this was by far the most delightfully charming and funny dickens I've ever read...and that in our modern times, one can't help but long for a savage editor to rein it all in.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      filled with Dickens usual chacaters, but it is very good

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I found the plot of Nicholas Nickleby hard to follow at times, but in the end felt that it was a book I might enjoy watching a film adaptation of. As writing, it pales in comparison to its predecessor, "Oliver Twist." Dickens tries to mix some of the same social criticism of the former work into this book (and apparently had quite an effect on the general population at the time, much to the detriment of the Yorkshire schools portrayed in this book), but with a greater focus on comedy. I was disappointed that he reverts back to such shallow portrayals of women after doing such an outstanding job of writing Nancy in "Oliver Twist," but to his credit I would say that I could imagine Kate as a living breathing character (and one who was far stronger than he seemed to be willing to portray her). Dickens also goes for the twist ending again here, but the melodrama seems forced. I would concur with critics who say that this book suffered from the time constraints on the author as he sought to hastily complete one overlapping manuscript after another.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book. Excellently narrated!!! I love it very much. Wow!!!
    • 4/5
      A very mixed book, this is an early Dickens, coming after the great Pickwick Papers and the melodramatic but wholly absorbing Oliver Twist.The positive aspects of the novel are led by the marvelous comic characters: Mrs Nickelby, who would drive the most patient of listeners to commit mayhem; Mr Lilyvick of the modest fortune and ever-changing will; Mr Crummles and his unusual family, which includes the Infant Prodigy, and several others. Another two believable, if less comic, characters are Newman Noggs and Miss LaCreevy. The settings are beautifully developed, and there’s a considerable amount of humor in the book. And the horrors of Dotheboys Hall are Dickens at his best—so good, in fact, that several headmasters considered suing Dickens for his portrayal, citing it as libelous.But my heavens! The plot is, even for Dickens, too full of coincidence and deus ex machina for the modern reader to take seriously. Parts of the ending are eminently satisfying, but other parts are too pat. And the book is so very, very long.Taken as a whole, this is an above-average novel, but it’s certainly not one of Dickens’s best.
    • 4/5
      Great opening paragraph eases readers smoothly into the challenging life of Nicholas Nickleby.The plot moves gently along with lovely entries like "Snow Hill!" "coffee-rooms,""...for gold conjures up a mist about a man."and: "He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two."Dickens weaves his humor into Nicholas' conversation as he exposes the vivid contrastsof the lives of the poor with the wanton material wealth of the rich.Unfortunately, he also proceeds to lapse us into catatonia with his muffins resolutions parody.But, what does Dickens have against Smike?!? His trials were painful to read,even when John Brodie brings actual comedy.This was welcome to both readers and to "...Nicholas sat down, so depressed and self-degraded by the consciousness of his position, that if death could have come upon himat that time, he would have been almost happy to meet it."Nicholas' words on Shakespeare were a true delight in the midst of the paid-by-wordserialization that made for some truly boring side plots.This is my favorite of all Dickens novels.
    • 5/5
      My favorite Dickens book so far. I'll read this one again someday.
    • 5/5
      Exquisite illustrations.
    • 4/5
      Dickens 4th book, and 3rd novel, published in 1838-39 and cementing his speedy celebrity, Nickleby combines the angry social statements of Oliver Twist with something of the sense of sharp satire of The Pickwick Papers. True, neither Nicholas nor Kate exhibit much in the way of interesting features, but as Tintin-esque Everypeople, they are surrounded by a gallery of delightful characters. The Victorian pathos is there in spades, and some of it is really quite silly, but one can feel Dickens gaining such a sense of self-assuredness as he works through this novel, and the picaresque nature of Nickleby's travels will not be equalled by any of the other novels that feature extensive journeys. The acting troupe, the brutal world of Mantilini's dress shop, and the figure of Ralph Nickleby, who extends on Fagin's sparks of life to suggest that the author might one day be interested in creating characters with more than one-and-a-half dimensions.

      Excepting parts of Little Dorrit and David Copperfield, this is the Dickens novel that has the purest sense of fun, and combined with some of the powerful statements about the workhouse and the place of women, it's a very worthy read. To be honest, I think this is the height of the Dickens canon for several years, until Copperfield comes along.
    • 4/5
      This was Dickens' third novel which he started writing in 1838, while he was finishing Oliver Twist, and finished writing in 1839, while he was starting The Old Curiosity Shop. Like most of his novels, it was originally published in monthly instalments before being published in a single volume.Initially I found Nicholas Nickleby a strange mixture of styles; Dickens' contract with his publishers was to write something 'of a similar character and of the same extent and contents in point of quantity' to The Pickwick Papers, Dickens' first novel, which was a lighter, more episodic work than Oliver Twist. However, Dickens' had been doing some investigative work in respect of the infamous 'Yorkshire schools' of the period and wanted to include some criticism of these schools in Nicholas Nickleby in the same way that he criticised the Poor Laws in Oliver Twist so it has some darker sections unlike The Pickwick Papers.Nicholas Nickleby follows the adventures of our eponymous hero, Nicholas Nickleby, his mother and his sister Kate after the death of their father. The family begin the story in a very bad way as Nicholas' father was in debt when he died. They are forced on the mercy of their uncle, the dastardly Ralph Nickleby who obtains a position for Nicholas as a teacher at a Yorkshire boarding school. The first quarter of the book shows us the appalling realities of life in a boys' boarding school in Yorkshire through the eyes of Nicholas. The villains who run the school are appropriately grotesque and their pupils appropriately pathetic so it would be easy for the reader to assume that Dickens' descriptions of these schools was an exaggeration. However, from the information in the introduction to my edition (the Penguin Classics edition) it seems that Dickens' description of these schools was all too accurate. Thankfully, the popularity of Nicholas Nickleby meant that most of these schools were forced to close down over the next ten years.As with all of Dickens' stories, the family who are obviously good and begin the book in poverty don't end the book that way, although there are many twists and turns before all the characters get what they deserve. I initially found the story somewhat rambling in nature and it felt like a lot of the incidents described, although amusing, didn't really have a bearing on the main plot. It helped me to think of these asides as being similar to The Pickwick Papers which is less plot driven and apparently this style of writing is similar to the picaresque style used by Henry Fielding in Tom Jones and Tobias Smollett's Humphrey Clinker.In terms of characters there were some wonderful villains such as Wackford Squeers, the owner of the Yorkshire school, and Ralph Nickleby, Nicholas' uncle who takes an immediate dislike to his nephew. Both were so deliciously villainous that I felt myself wanting to boo or hiss at them in pantomime style every time they entered the story. There are also many ridiculous characters to laugh at such as Nicholas' mother who never fails to wander from the point in the most amusing fashion and the deceitful yet entertainingly flattering Mr Mantalini. To me Nicholas Nickleby seems to lie somewhere in between Dickens' first two novels in terms of style, or rather, it seems to be combine aspects of both and so overall, I didn't think it worked quite as well as either. However, I still enjoyed it a lot, especially once I was past the slower first quarter of the book.
    • 5/5
      Nicholas's father left him, his sister, and his mother without a home or any money at all at his death, and so they seek help from a rich uncle, who turns out to be the great villain of the plot. Nicholas must seek his own fortune and meets an outstanding variety of characters along the way, who run the spectrum from angelic to despicable with plenty of comic relief in between. It reads like a Shakespearean comedy on a grand and intricate scale, complete with a coming-of-age story and multiple marriages at the end. I loved it. I absolutely loved it.
    • 5/5
      Verbose, meandering and even shallow, but full of Dickens genius for sarcastic humor and memorable characters.
    • 3/5
      3.5 stars. Typical Dickens which I normally love but this was not one of my favorites. It is the first one that I listened to and it took me quite awhile to get through so I think I just never got fully engaged with it. Despite that an average book by Dickens is still really enjoyable. Good characters with a strong narrator made for some entertaining scenes.
    • 4/5
      Nicholas Nickleby wasn't, for me, the best Dickens I've read so far (and I've still got a lot to go...!). At times it felt a little aimless, but as usual, the characters and the descriptions are just brilliant. You know it's going to end well, but how it gets there is often a bit of a roundabout journey. My favourite characters were Mr Squeers (love that name!), Miss La Creevey, and Mrs Nickleby. They were hilarious.
    • 5/5
      Very entertaining and fast-moving, although quite fairy-tale like in places: Nicholas seemed to lead a charmed life. I particularly enjoyed his stint as an actor/playwright and most of his mother's speeches. The Cheerybles were too good to be true (did Nicholas ever do any real work for them), but handy for the resolution of the plot. I found Madeline to be very underwritten, and Smike's true identity came completely out of left-field, but it was such a romp that it didn't really matter.The potential fates of both Madeline and Kate, while realistic, seemed quite racy for a Victorian novel, especially as I have read of Dickens asking Trollope to alter things in his novels on morality grounds...
    • 3/5
      Dickens' third, and very wordy, work published in installments totaling 761 pages (in my Project Gutenberg download). Tells the story of Nicholas and family (mother and sister, Kate) from the time of their sudden plunge into poverty on the death of their father at the time of failed investments. The book is notionally a love story telling the romances of Nicholas and Kate, but the theme of the work is social standing and mobility - mostly abrupt falls such as faced by the Nickleby's, Newman Nogg and Madeline Bray, but also some attempts to establish a status, such as by the Kenwigses with their water rates collector uncle as their lynchpin. The writing has its soap opera-ish elements - such as when Uncle Ralph just happens to overhear Kate candidly venting her views behind a screen, and in the utterly black and white characters - pure evil such as Uncle Ralph and schoolmaster Squeers, or pure good, such as the brothers Cherryble. Dickens is also careful to avoid subtlety - where Jane Austen allows characters to define themselves by their speech and actions, Dickens sees the need to add asides to remove all doubt. Dickens has two, clearly personal, digs in the book - one against politicians when NN applies for a job with an MP, and a second when he gives a piece of his mind to a "literary gentleman" who dramatises novels for the stage. Among the darkness, there are slabs of comedy. The acting troop that NN joins, and especially the juvenile "Phenomenon" provides much humour, as does the bucolic John Browdie with his broad Yorkshire accent and simple manners. So, the book is not without flaws, but Dickens does manage to pull it off - I was in the grip of a page-turner for the last third of the book. Read December 2011.
    • 2/5
      Not one of Dickens' strongest tales. I just couldn't make myself care much about Nicholas although I liked Kate a bit more. But his secondary characters were brilliant as usual -- Ralph Nickleby, Wackford Squeers, Smike, the Brothers Cheerfull -- all wonderful. But my favorite part was the happy ending for Linkinwater and Miss La Creevy in the final chapter -- a beautiful, sentimental, feel-good poignant passage.
    • 4/5
      A more appropriate title might be “The Nicklebys” or “The Nickleby Family”. Mean, miserly Uncle Ralph is as much the center of the novel as Nicholas, and there’s Kate Nickleby, and Nicholas’s mother. It’s a Victorian plot full of coincidences and family secrets – a joy to read and discover.
    • 5/5
      One of the great books of English literature - so no need to bore you with a review. I loved it.
      Also - the unabridged audio read by Alex Jennings is nothing short of phenomenal.
    • 4/5
      It was a happy day when I, for whatever reason, elected to sample Charles Dickens. Having read A Tale of Two Cities in high school, I digressed to more popular fiction (Michener, Clavell, McMurtry, King, Grisham), as well as periods of science fiction and even non-fiction (Ambrose, McCollough for example), before making an effort to upgrade my reading list.I read some Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Steinbeck and Hemingway with mixed success before reading Great Expectations. I liked it enough to read David Copperfield, and I was hooked. A Tale of Two Cities followed and then Oliver Twist (not my favorite) and Bleak House (another below average Dickens novel in my opinion) before taking on this lengthy tome.As in many of his previous works, Dickens introduces his protagonist and then follows him throughout succeeding adventures, introducing many quirky and fascinating characters. It is these characters that spice up the narrative and are the strength of Dickens’s writing in my opinion. Midway through this novel, I compared it favorably to David Copperfield (the gold standard), but as the book droned on, it diminished in enjoyment. Perhaps the fact that it was introduced in serial form had an effect on the flow of the story once it was incorporated into a single novel, but for whatever reason, I grew tired of it before its conclusion. Having read several Dickens works prior to this one, I was aware that a period of acclimation is required before becoming comfortable with both the language and the cultural landscape. Unlike Bleak House, whose dialogue I found to be overly florid and tortured at times, I had no such problem with this work. If you have never read Dickens, it may take a little while to become comfortable, but if you have, you should have no problem.Make no mistake, at nearly 900 pages this is a real door stop, and while it is not my favorite Dickens effort, it is nonetheless worth the time and effort to read.
    • 5/5
      NICHOLAS NICKLEBY is a significant Dickens in the uncannily absorbing way the narrative diversifies to various literary discourses. The protagonist's experiences and encounters in adverse milieu through life not only embody melodrama, comic relief, political satire, class comedy, social criticism, and domestic farce, they allow Dickens the opportunity to portray, to the minutest nuance, an extraordinary cast of rogues and eccentrics. The main frame of NICHOLAS NICKLEBY is a quintessential Dickens: a generic, virtuous man who concerns with the affair of establishing his identity as a gentleman and the pruning of whom entwines him in a checkered fate. Nicholas Nickleby has committed no fault and offenses, and yet he is to be entirely alone in the world, to be separated from the people he loves, and to be proscribed like a criminal. The more unbearable the ordeals and the more injudicious the deal of the hand from life, the more profusely the novel accentuates Dickens' outrage at the cruelty and social injustice. When Nicholas Nickleby is left exiguous after his father's death, he turns to his hard-hearted uncle to solicit succor. But Ralph Nickleby, a most unscrupulous and avarious man he is, demonstrates that he is proof against all appeals of blood and kindred, and is steeled against every tale of distress and sorrows. The man will never fail to exert any resolution or cunning that will promise increase of money for there is scarcely anything he will not have hazarded to gratify his greed. It's not that he is unconscious of the baseness of the means with which he acquires his gains. He cares only for gratification of his passions of avarice and hatred. He might have from the beginning conceived dislike to his nephew whom he brazenly places in Squeers' Dotheboys Hall, a school for unwanted boys, as an assistant master. The cruelty of Squeers, who's coarse and ruffian behavior even at his best temper, Nicholas has been an unwilling witness. The filthy condition of the school and the bodily distortion of the boys impart in him a dismal feeling. The thought of being a helper and abettor of such squalid practice fills his with honest disgust and indignation. The cruelties descend upon helpless infancy fuel this rightful indignation in Nicholas, who interferes with the schoolmaster's flogging a boy named Smike and astonishes everyone in school. Not only does Ralph persuade Nicholas' family to renounce him for the atrocities to Squeers of which he is guilty, he also betrays his niece Kate into the company of some libertine men who are clients of his and who speak of her in a most casual, lecherous, ribald and vulgar terms. She is roused beyond all endurance by a profusion of compliments of which coarseness becomes humor and of which vulgarity softens down to the most charming eccentricity. The mutual hatred between uncle and nephew aggravates as Nicholas overhears conversations about his sister. The hidden feud further percolates to the surface and leads to a pitch to its malignity as he tries to rescue a girl from a marriage to which she has been impelled. As the uncle insidiously hatches a scheme to retaliate against his nephew who has in every step of the way interceded and thwarted his plans for mercenary gains, Nicholas entwines with a cast of characters who are humorous, memorable, and true to life. Peripheral to his molding to become a gentleman are episodes of political satire, theatrical success, courtship, family farce, and chicanery. The most significant character is no doubt Smike, whom Nicholas saves from the hellish grip of the schoolmaster and has become his best friend. Nicholas' unfailing love and protectiveness toward the boy accentuates his being the novel's hero, whose domestic virtues, affections, compassion, and delicacy of feelings qualifies him to his later fortune and does him justice. NICHOLAS NICKLEBY is a flamboyantly exuberant work in which Dickens wreaks the tension of his social satire to a pitch. Details on the Yorkshire school offer such magnifying vision of the cruelty, filthiness, and despotism in the boarding schools. Nor does he spare the rogues and the greedy, whose squeamishness he sarcastically embellishes as a common honesty and whose pride as self-respect. NICHOLAS NICKLEBY also evokes the subtle problem of human nature in establishing boundary of one's remorse. Although Ralph might feel no remorse in his betraying his niece to the temptation of his libertine clients, he hates them for doing what he has expected them to do. In a sense, Nicholas is seen as the unswerving force that is determined to right the wrong of the society. He tries to appeal to the compassion and humanity of those who have gone astray and to lead them to consider the innocent and the helpless. Nicholas might embody energy for radicalism and ambition to challenge social injustice; his ultimate goal is the recovery of his ancestral position in the social hierarchy. But in the effort to undertake the good deeds, he is influenced by no selfish or personal consideration but by pity for the people he helps and detestation and abhorrence of the heartless schemes. In the same way he is determined to appeal to his uncle's humanity and not to wreak revenge on him. But Ralph's hatred for his nephew has been fed upon his own defeat, nourished on his interference with all his schemes. NICHOLAS NICKLEBY is a sober social commentary woven with social and domestic issues. Woven in one man's aspiration to restore family's ancestral dignity is Dickens' own musing, monologues, teachings on the soul, the life, and the moral. The discourse at times assumes a voice of despondency, sobriety and indignation.
    • 5/5
      This was a great read. Romance and evil villains and minor theatricals. A from rags-to-riches kind of tale. It was relaxing to read about a time where things moved only as fast as your feet (or your horses) and not faster than your brain can conceive of. If everyone today read a course of Dickens I think we'd be much less stressed out and more happy. Turn off your screens.
    • 5/5
      Q: Why, more than 140 years+ after his death is Charles Dickens still regarded as the greatest novelist the English language has ever seen?A: Because that is what he is.Nicholas Nickleby is a good illustration. I set myself to finish this - 776 pages in this edition - in a month; in the event it took twelve days. On most days, I only put it down because my eyes were throbbing from the small print.Of course, 776 pages is a lot of book but there is a lot of story; a lot happens to a lot of people. The reader must be given a chance to get to know these people if he is to a give a damn what happens to them. Dickens gives us this time; it is part of his art. He takes time, too, to describe people and places; remember that he wrote in the days before television, or newsreels, or even cheap picture-books. If he wanted the reader to know what something looked like, he had to describe it.To many, in this world where one death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a sound-bite, such a deliberate approach to story-telling will prove too taxing. To those with a more traditional attention span, it must simply add to the experience.And experience it is. Nickleby loses nothing with the passing of years. Dickens dealt, as do all great writers, with human nature and the real world. At root, neither changes. We are still afflicted with businessmen who know no morality beyond the p&l account; educationalists who substitute cant for understanding and choose to forget the humanity of their charges; gold diggers, cheats and frauds; and parents who care nothing for their children.Nicholas Nickleby was a page-turner in 1838 and it is a page-turner today. It has, by turns, villainy and romance, comedy and tragedy, sudden death and new beginnings. Truly, all human life is here.
    • 3/5
      I enjoy Dickens very much and fin some of his novels have had a deep impact on me. Nicholas Nickleby is a typical Dickens novel--memorable names, poor family survives adversity to prosper, and commentary on social evils (a certain class of for-profit schools and usury) and it was enjoyable to read. Somehow, it felt to me a bit below-par for Dickens. I was very conscious of the "plot machinery" creaking along toward the entirely predictable denouement, something not true of most of the other Dickens novels I have read.
    • 4/5
      After his father dies, Nicholas Nickleby must go to work to support his mother and sister. The family is at the mercy of the "wicked uncle." Nicholas, at Ralph's arrangement, takes a position with Dothebys, a boarding school run by Mr. Squeers. Squeers and his equally corrupt wife regularly abuse the boys in their charge. After an incident, Nicholas leaves for London, being joined by Smike, one of the older boys. Newman Noggs, an employee of Ralph Nickleby,delivers a message to Nicholas. Life, love, and corruption continue to abound in the novel. Like most of Dickens' novels, social problems of the day are prominent. Enjoyable, but probably not Dickens' best work.
    • 5/5
      Before Ebenezer Scrooge, there was Ralph Nickleby. In Nicholas Nickleby, Dicken's third novel published in 1839, Dickens combines the humor of Pickwick Papers with the graphic social ills of Oliver Twist. Our hero is a young man named Nicholas Nickleby whose father recently died, leaving his son, daughter, and wife nearly destitute. When they travel to London to seek help from their miserly Uncle Ralph, they have no conception of the struggles they will face as they learn to survive in a hard world. From the crowded streets of impersonal London to the flamboyant color and drama of the stage, Nicholas' adventures are thoroughly entertaining. Please be advised that there are spoilers to follow.The characters are brilliant. Dickens, you've gone and done it again — created characters I love and many I hate, with a few weak ones in between that I'm just glad I don't have to deal with in real life! The Cheerybles, the Crummles, Tim Linkinwater, and dear Miss La Creevy are great fun, and their warmhearted goodness more than balances the evil characters. Over the top they may be, but they live vibrantly in the novel, and I won't forget them. And the villains are wonderfully villainous: Ralph Nickleby, a great Dickensian misanthrope, Mr. and Mrs. Squeers, the epitome of selfish, blatant cruelty, silly and malicious Miss Squeers, greedy Wackford Jr., and the dissipated debauchee Sir Mulberry Hawk. Dickens' character names are delicious, as usual... Peg Sliderskrew, Arthur Gride, Mr. Lillyvick, and the rest.Despite the heaviness of the subject matter — the nauseating abuse and neglect occurring in Yorkshire boarding schools of the time, the plight of women who are prey to rapacious men, the agony of poverty — Dickens still manages to infuse his story with some wonderful humor. Whether it's the wry narrative voice ("Mr. Squeers's appearance was not prepossessing. He had but one eye, and the general prejudice runs in favour of two"), the characters' own merriment (John Browdie, your laugh is infectious even from the page), or the ridiculous comic situations (like Mrs. Nickleby's senile admirer coming down the chimney to find her), there is much to laugh over in these pages. It's one of the things Dickens does so well: mixing the heavy and/or melodramatic moments with unabashed humor that is still funny today.One of the darker themes of the story is how female beauty is a commodity to be bought and sold like anything else. Dickens represents this as a heinous evil, and if he over-glorifies the delicacy and virginity of his two young heroines, I can forgive him because of his anger toward their oppressors and concern for their happiness. Early in the story he indignantly notes that the birth dates of girls were never recorded, just those of boys. Modern feminism may find Dickens a bit of a soft chauvinist, but he shouldn't be judged by standards he never knew. It's more fair (and enjoyable) to look at the gender issues of his work in the context of his own historical period, not ours. Dickens is rather like Victor Hugo in this way.Sometimes Dickens' social and moral causes get away from him and take over the narrative. In one scene Nicholas gives a lengthy diatribe against playwrights who steal the plots of struggling novelists (clearly Dickens had NO personal experience with such abuses!). The diatribe is intelligent and eloquent, but rather odd in the mouth of Nicholas, who had no previous experience in the story with that particular evil and who could hardly have been expected to possess such an articulate opinion on it. It's a technical flaw to make Nicholas a mouthpiece in such a clumsy way, though I can understand the indignation that prompted Dickens to do so.There have been several film adaptations of the story, but the only one I have seen is the 2002 version written and directed by Douglas McGrath and starring Charlie Hunnam, Anne Hathaway, Christopher Plummer, Romola Garai, Jim Broadbent, and Jamie Bell. The film itself is gorgeous, and I loved the opening credits rolling in front of the painted miniature stage props; such a nice allusion to the theatrical nature of the story. The casting and acting are excellent, for the most part (with some slight qualms about Hunnam's Nicholas, but nothing major). As in the book, John Browdie is a wonderfully congenial and funny character, and Jim Broadbent and Juliet Stevenson as the Squeers are truly sadistic in a very dark (rather than maudlin) way. It was nice to see Timothy Spall (who plays Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter films) play a good guy in Charles Cheeryble. Romola Garai was lovely as Kate, and Ralph Nickleby's character is handled deftly by Christopher Plummer.As expected, parts of the story were condensed or completely dropped from the film: no Kenwigs, no Mantalinis, no Arthur Gride (Hawk takes his part), no Tim Linkinwater (he is conflated with Frank Cheeryble), barely any Miss La Creevy, no inheritance for Madeline, and no duel between Lord Frederick Verisopht and Sir Mulberry Hawk (though Verisopht does keep his brave speech!), to name a few. But though I am generally a purist, I do understand that some things will have to be cut in the process of adapting an almost eight-hundred-page novel to a two-hour film. Compressing events, changing a letter to a face-to-face confrontation, and making other similar changes don't bother me overmuch as long as there is a good reason. It's when the screenwriters start changing characters and plotlines dramatically that I have a problem. That didn't happen in this film, thankfully. Nicholas Nickleby is considerably more serious than McGrath's Emma starring Gwyneth Paltrow, but it has hints of the same light humorous touch in places. Overall, I enjoyed it very much.This story is complete with all the unlikely coincidences requisite for a good Dickens. Sometimes the characters are a bit too dramatically Victorian to seem realistic, but you've just got to go with it. Yes, characters will die in each other's arms; yes, it's going to take Kate three days to compose herself after her first assault by Sir Mulberry Hawk; yes, Newman Noggs will devote his life to the enemies of his employer Ralph Nickleby out of sheer revenge. And somehow it all works. I don't think that Nicholas Nickleby is considered one of Dickens' stronger works, but I loved it and would probably rate it third among my favorites (right behind Pickwick Papers and Bleak House). Nicholas is an engaging, imperfect, humorous character who really grows into his strength throughout the course of the novel, and I greatly enjoyed cheering him on. Bravo, Dickens!
    • 4/5
      Before there was Scrooge, there was Ralph Nickleby. Years before “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens had already created a character in “Nicholas Nickleby” who could have given Scrooge lessons in miserliness.The novel, published in 1838, opens with the death of Ralph's brother, making him responsible for his brother's widow and her two grown but not yet independent children, Nicholas and Kate. First he moves them into much more humble accommodations, then finds Nicholas a position as a tutor in a boy's school far from London. With the brother out of the way, he uses pretty Kate to entice two playboy noblemen into some business dealings, unmindful of what might happen to Kate afterward.Nicholas soon discovers the headmaster at the school to be abusive toward the boys in his care. He flees with one of those boys and finds himself for a time with a wandering theater group before learning of his sister's situation. When he returns to rescue her, a long struggle between uncle and nephew begins, with many complications and adventures.“Nicholas Nickleby” was not a successful novel in its day, at least in comparison with “Oliver Twist,” but it is hard to understand why. While it may not be one of the best novels Dickens wrote, it provides nonstop entertainment (except for one chapter that is obviously just padding and could be skipped without missing any of the story). It would make an excellent entry-level Dickens novel for those intimidated by that author's reputation for meandering plots and multitudes of characters. Here the plot rarely strays far from the Nicklebys, and the characters, while plentiful, are easy to keep straight. If the reader becomes confused about who a character is, Dickens soon enough makes it clear.This was one of the early Dickens novels. He was still learning the game he would soon master, but we can already find evidence of some of the writer's greatest personal interests and concerns, among them the plight of boys in schools operated for profit, young women coerced into careers in the sex trade and the theater, his greatest love, perhaps even including writing.There's humor here (Mrs. Nickleby ranks among his greatest comic characters), an abundance of romance (the clergy will have all the weddings they can handle by the end of the novel) and all the plot twists a reader could want. It's a massive novel, of course, but this is Dickens in an age when writers were paid for bulk. When a novel is this much fun, however, size is more blessing than curse.
    • 5/5
      I have finished this wonderful novel on the eve of the author's 200th anniversary. While for me this was not quite as consistently marvellous throughout as David Copperfield, this may be because Nicholas is not quite so central to the story line in all parts of the book as David; indeed he fades out of focus for whole sequences of chapters at a time while other characters' storylines come to the fore. Ralph is a marvellous villain and would be such just as much so in 2012 as he was in 1839; Newman Noggs was perfect as a shabby and disreputable but you love him really sort of chap; while Smike is one of the most tragic older boys or young men in literature and his decline and death really heartbreaking. I also liked the solid and reliable Yorkshireman John Browdie. The Cheeryble brothers I found slightly tiresome. Mrs Nickleby was unintentionally hilarious with her being completely caught up in her own view of the world and of the people around her, and her scenes with the amorous mad next door neighbour some of the best slapstick comedy I have read. Kate was a little more nondescript. Overall a marvellous cast of characters and a satisfying plotline. This is up there in my favourite group of 3 or 4 Dickens novels. 5/5
    • 4/5
      My favorite Dickens read so far. Never thought I would find one that would surpass Great Expectations, but this one did. While Dickens continues to bring forth, in vivid strokes, the bleak and terrible realities of his time period, there is a vibrancy of melodrama - and a bit of a carnival spirit - that gives this story a more lighthearted feel. While I have only scratched the surface of Dickens' writings, I find that he has a flair for creating some rather interesting characters. As much as I despise Ralph Nickleby, his fierce and calculating business mind is something to marvel at. Mrs. Nickleby comes across as a bit of an aristocratic "ditzy" woman but even she makes the odd observation that made me hit rewind once or twice. Overall, one of the better Dickens reads for me - and redeems Dickens in view of how much I despised Bleak House - giving me the incentive to consider reading more of Dickens works.
    • 5/5
      I found Nicholas Nickelby to be a very entertaining book with lots of humor. It is a long book but holds your attention because of the quirky characters that Dickens is noted for. In Nicholas Nickelby, Dickens is showing us the social injustice mainly to children. The theme of good vs. evil is also very prevalent but in the end good is victorious and the novel finishes with the characters living happily ever after. I would recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in reading about Victorian England.