Nicholas Nickleby

Resumen del libro

I shall never regret doing as I have never, if I starve or beg in consequence'

When Nicholas Nickleby is left penniless after his father's death, he appeals to his wealthy uncle to help him find work and to protect his mother and sister. But Ralph Nickleby proves both hard-hearted and unscrupulous, and Nicholas finds himself forced to make his own way in the world. Nicholas's adventures gave Dickens the opportunity to portray a extraordinary gallery of rogues and eccentrics: Wackford Squeers, tyrannical headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, a school for unwanted boys; the slow-witted orphan Smike, rescued by Nicholas; and the gloriously theatrical Mr and Mrs Crummle, and their daughter, the infant phenomenon'. Like many of Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby is characterized by his outrage at cruelty and social injustice, but it is also a flamboyantly exuberant work, revealing Dickens's comic genius at its most unerring.

Mark Ford's introduction compares Nicholas Nickleby to eighteenth-century picaresque novels, and examines Dickens's criticism of the Yorkshire Schools', his social satire and use of language. This edition also includes the original illustrations by Phiz', a chronology and a list for further reading.

Biografía del autor

Charles Dickens (Portsmuth, 1812 Gadshill, 1870) ha llegado hasta nosotros como el autor más importante e influyente de la literatura victoriana. Sus obras y su peripecia personal, íntimamente relacionadas, plasmaron no sólo el pulso social de su época, también el terrible estado moral de una sociedad atrapada en la desigualdad y las convenciones. Dickens experimentó la miseria, el éxito popular, la cárcel, el hambre... sólo logró cumplir con el más íntimo de sus anhelos, la libertad, entregándose a la literatura. Aunque muchas de sus obras gozaron de un extraordinario favor popular, baste decir que muchas de ellas fueron publicadas por entregas, en formato folletín; serían las críticas entusiastas de George Gissing y G. K. Chesterton las que encumbrarían a Dickens como el autor más importante de la literatura inglesa del siglo XIX.