Cheap boarding schools in Yorkshire were advertised in the London papers with an emphasis on 'no holiday' and were a convenient place to dispose of unwanted or illegitimate children. Dickens and his illustrator Hablot Browne (phiz) traveled incognito to Yorkshire on a fact-finding mission in January 1838. There they encountered William Shaw, headmaster of Bowes Academy, in whose school several boys had died or went blind from mistreatment and neglect.
Visiting a cemetery in the area Dickens found the graves of many of the students of these schools and one in particular Dickens said "put Smike into my head". Smike was the abused inmate of Dotheboys Hall, the fictional school he based on Shaw's Bowes Academy in Nicholas Nickleby. The fictional headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, Wackford Squeers, was based on William Shaw.
The ignorance of the schoolmaster Squeers is more than a comic exaggeration. Edgar Johnson, in his biography of Dickens, notes that as late as 1851, 2.5 per cent of the schoolmasters and mistresses in private schools signed their census returns with a mark.
Cavendish Square
Golden Square
Thames Street
King's Bench Prison
Threadneedle Street
Snow Hill
Belgrave Square
The Strand
The theater is central to the plot of Nicholas Nickleby and Dickens dedicated the novel to his friend, distinguished actor and theater manager William Macready.
| Nicholas Nickleby - Published in monthly parts Mar 1838
- Sep 1839 Read it online | Buy it at Amazon.com | Video | Illustrations 
Dickens third novel was illustrated
by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz).
Dickens and Browne, traveling under assumed names, visited the notorious
boarding schools in Yorkshire to do background research for the novel,
which deals with the mistreatment of children sent to these schools.
Although the central theme takes on this serious subject, Dickens
mixes in some of his best comic writing.Dickens biographers George Gissing and G.K. Chesterton praised the comic characterization of the novel and Peter Ackroyd, in his biography Dickens, says that Nicholas Nickleby is "perhaps the funniest novel in the English language".
Hoping to provide support for his mother and sister after the death of his father Nicholas turns to his uncle Ralph for assistance. Ralph wants nothing to do with his late brother's family and feigns to help Nicholas by securing a position as assistant master at the Dotheboys Hall school in Yorkshire run by unscrupulous Wackford Squeers. Nicholas soon becomes disgusted with Squeer's treatment of his pupils and leaves, giving Squeers a sound thrashing and liberating Smike,  whom
Squeers has mistreated for years. Nicholas and Smike move in with Newman Noggs in London and then travel to Portsmouth where they take up acting in Crummles stage company. On hearing of the mistreatment of his sister at the hands of his uncle, Nicholas and Smike return to London. Nicholas secures employment with the philanthropic Cheeryble brothers and later marries Madeline Bray whom he has helped rescue from the evil designs of Ralph and Arthur Gride. |
| Principal Characters: Nicholas Nickleby Ralph Nickleby Kate Nickleby Mrs. Nickleby Smike Wackford Squeers Mrs Squeers Wackford Squeers Jr Fanny Squeers Matilda Price John Browdie Newman Noggs The Kenwigs Mr Lillyvick Henrietta Petowker Miss La Creevy Madame Mantalini Mr Mantalini Vincent Crummles Mrs Crummles Miss Ninetta Crummles Tommy Folair Thomas Lenville The Wititterlys Cheeryble Brothers Frank Cheeryble Madeline Bray Walter Bray Tim Linkinwater Lord Frederick Verisopht Sir Mulberry Hawk Mr Snawley Arthur Gride Peg Sliderskew |
Nicholas Nickleby Links: The Dickens Page Bartleby.com Robert Giddings review of the 2002 film version Wikipedia - Nicholas Nickleby
The story of the benevolent brothers who aid Nicholas and his family
resulted in Dickens getting hundreds upon hundreds of applications
for loans, gifts, and other requests for aid to be forwarded to the
originals of the Cheeryble brothers. In the preface to the Cheap Edition
of Nicholas Nickleby in 1848 Dickens claimed that the brothers
were based on real persons "with whom I never interchanged any communication
in my life". Paul Davis in The Penguin Dickens Companion says
that the brothers were based on William and Daniel Grant, Manchester
calico merchants whom Dickens met in 1838. |
`"EDUCATION. -- At Mr Wackford Squeers's Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled. Mr Squeers is in town, and attends daily, from one till four, at the Saracen's Head, Snow Hill. N.B. An able assistant wanted. Annual salary 5 pounds. A Master of Arts would be preferred."
Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with the countenances
of old men, deformities with irons upon their limbs, boys of stunted growth,
and others whose long meagre legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies,
all crowded on the view together; there were the bleared eye, the hare-lip,
the crooked foot, and every ugliness or distortion that told of unnatural
aversion conceived by parents for their offspring, or of young lives which,
from the earliest dawn of infancy, had been one horrible endurance of cruelty
and neglect. There were little faces which should have been handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged suffering; there was childhood with the light of its eye quenched, its beauty gone, and its helplessness alone remaining.
| Excerpt: There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken him for the same reason. Thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love. |
 March 1838 Daughter Mary (Mamie) Dickens Born November 1838 Oliver Twist published in 3 volumes. Dickens revised the monthly parts for the publication which was the first published under Charles Dickens instead of Boz. Monthly serialization of Oliver Twist in Bentley's Miscellany continues. Visiting Manchester with Hablot Browne, Dickens meets Daniel and William Grant, originals for the Cheeryble brothers in Nickleby. February 1839 Resigns as editor of Bentley's Miscellany April 1839 Oliver Twist Serialization concluded in Bentley's Miscellany. Rents a cottage in Petersham for four months June 1839 Goes to the races at Hampton, scene of the quarrel between Mulberry Hawk and Lord Frederick in Nickleby. Dickens' publishers, Chapman and Hall, commission artist Daniel Maclise to paint a portrait of Dickens. Maclise goes to Petersham where Dickens sits for the portrait known as the Nickleby Portrait, an engraving of the portrait used as the frontispiece for the novel. September 1839 |
