Heavyweight classic. very funny, in that old-fashioned sort of way, but fuck, it's long. Well worth it though. Not something to be enjoyed on a hot summer day. I'd rather read it in winter with a cup of hot chocolate. The characters are hilarious. I wish people still wrote like that. ( )

http://www.lonelymountain.net/books/j... ( )

A book with great societal impact
September 2000

I don't want to say much about the quality of the novel itself. I find it the most two-dimensional of all his novels (and I've read the Old Curiousity Shop, which is full of grotesqueries!). But I do want to provide some perspective as to the background of this novel.

Before Dickens wrote this novel, some friends of his brought to his notice of horrid boarding schools in the Yorkshire area. Dickens traveled the countryside incognito, visiting the schools and some people in the area. He found that these schools were being run under the principle of being storehouses for unwanted boys. "Natural" children, inconvenient children from a first marriage, children of widowers who didn't have time to bring up their boys were shipped off to these schools, never to come home for the holidays, and under most circumstances the boy wouldn't make it to the age of 18 at which time he would be ejected from the school with no useful learning.

Part of the motivation of this novel was to bring this practice to light -- many of the people in Yorkshire did not know what was going on the schools and those who did know did not see what they could do about it.

Then Nicholas Nickleby started to be published. Like all of his novels, this book came out in 3-chapter installments. Well before the book was halfway over, people spontaneously gathered around some of these schools, ejected children and masters alike, and set the buildings to torch. By the end of publication, the infamous Yorkshire schools were totally gone.

So keep this in mind while reading this book, which seems juvenile and flat compared even his previous two novels, Oliver Twist and the Pickwick Papers. This is the only of Dickens' novels to have an immediate and profound impact in his society. When was the last time you heard of a novel creating effective activism in a community?

1760 The Life & Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens (read 13 Jan 1983) When I heard that the stage presentation of this book was to be on TV I began to read the book. I was almost finished with the book when I saw the TV play. This is quite a book, with all the Dickens traits and defects. It was first published as a book in 1839 and I found it absorbing at times, but also discursive and ridiculous. Nicholas Nickleby goes to a Yorkshire school as an assistant to the impossible Waxford Squeers, whom he beats up and leaves with Smike. They go on the stage awhile, and then Nick goes to work for the Cheeryble Brothers. Ralph Nickleby, the evil uncle, tries to do evil things but is consistently thwarted, includng the marriage of Nicholas' beloved Madeline to an old miser. Really, as one thinks about it it all seems quite stupid. But it had its moments. ( )

I had never read this before 2008 because I assumed it would be exactly like Oliver Twist, which I can't stand. Between OT and Pickwick Papers I was firmly against early Dickens, but then I finally picked this up, and found myself laughing out loud every other page, and rushing home from errands so I could read more, and generally having a perfect reading experience. Yay! This is what Dickens should always be.