Mrs Watson’ in F. G. Kitton’s Charles Dickens by Pen and Pencil(London: Frank T. Sabin/John F. Dexter, 1890), p. 145.
11.For further discussion of Nicholas, see Beth F. Herst, The Dickens Hero(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990), pp. 9 – 24, and Michael Cotsell, ‘Nicholas Nickleby: Dickens’s First Young Man’, Dickens Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 3, September 1988, pp. 118 – 27
12.See Norman Russell, ‘Nicholas Nicklebyand the Commercial Crisis of 1825’, Dickensian, 77 (1981), pp. 144 – 50, and his The Novelist and Mammon: Literary Responses to the World of Commerce in the Nineteenth Century(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
13.Charles Dickens(London: Burns & Oates, 1975; first published 1906), p. 106.
14.‘The Vulgarity of Little Nell’ (1930), reprinted in The Dickens Critics, ed. George H. Ford and Lauriat Lane, Jr (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1961) p. 153.
15.‘The Limitations of Dickens’ (1865), reprinted in Ford and Lane, p. 52. For further discussion of Mrs Nickleby see Michael Slater, ‘Appreciating Mrs Nickleby’, Dickensian, 71 (1975), pp. 136 – 9; Margaret Ganz, Humor, Irony, and the Realm of Madness(New York: AMS Press, 1990), pp. 65 – 99; and Patricia Ingham, Dickens, Women and Language(Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992).
16.‘Charles Dickens’ (1940), reprinted in Ford and Lauriat, p. 159.
17.For a full discussion of the importance of Dickens’s images of circulation, see David Trotter, Circulation: Defoe, Dickens and the Economies of the Novel(London: Macmillan, 1988) and his ‘Dickens’s Idle Men’ in Dickens Refigured, ed. John Schad (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996).
18.Charles Dickensp. 10. Chesterton goes on to declare that ‘there is more of the real spirit of the French Revolution in Nicholas Nicklebythan in The Tale of Two Cities’.
19.Quoted by John Bayley in The Uses of Division: Unity and Disharmony in Literature(London: Chatto & Windus, 1976), p. 90.
20.For a full discussion of the status of actors in the late 1830s, see Schlicke’s Dickens and Popular Entertainment.
21.For further discussion of Smike’s relationship to bourgeois society, see Natalie McKnight, Idiots, Madmen, and Other Prisoners in Dickens(New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993), pp. 69 – 80.
22.Dickens obviously came to feel the lord’s satirical second name made this development hard to take seriously; when he came to revise the novel for the Charles Dickens Edition of 1867, he substituted ‘Lord Frederick’ for ‘Lord Verisopht’ on a regular basis from chapter 26onwards.
23.For further discussion of this aspect of the novel, see Robin Gilmour, ‘Between Two Worlds: Aristocracy and Gentility in Nicholas Nickleby’, Dickens Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 3 (1988), pp. 110 – 18, and his The Idea of the Gentleman in the Victorian Novel(London: Allen and Unwin, 1981).
24.John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens(London: J. M. Dent, 1969; first published 1872 – 4), p. 16.
25.Charles Dickens(London: Blackie & Son, 1898), p. 47.
26.Bolton, p. 154. The most recent of these was by David Edgar for the Royal Shakespeare Company. See Leon Rubin, The Nicholas Nickleby Story(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), and David Edgar, ‘Adapting Nickleby’, Dickensian, 79 (1983), pp.21—30.
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
Nicholas Nicklebywas first published in twenty parts over a period of nineteen months, from 31 March 1838 to 30 September 1839. The last number was a double one costing twice as much (two shillings rather than one shilling), and included parts 19 and 20, the frontispiece, preface, title page and a table of contents. The full title used on the cover of each serial instalment was The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby Containing a Faithful Account of the Fortunes, Misfortunes, Uprisings, Downfallings, and Complete Career of the Nickleby Family.1
The first volume edition of the novel was published in October 1839; this corrected a few printer’s errors, but was otherwise identical with the text of the serial. Dickens revised the novel twice: for the 1848 Cheap Edition of his works – for which he wrote a new Preface; and for the 1867 Charles Dickens Edition.
The vast majority of changes Dickens made in 1848. These revisions consist mainly of cuts of some of the original’s more melodramatic flourishes. ‘ “Beaten at every point!” muttered Ralph, gnawing at his fingers’ becomes, in 1848, ‘ “Beaten at every point!” muttered Ralph’‘ “Let me go!” cried Sir Mulberry, gnashing his teeth’ becomes, ‘ “Let me go!” cried Sir Mulberry’. In 1839 Ralph regards Nicholas ‘with a scowl of deadly hatred’, whereas in 1848 and 1867, it is merely ‘with a scowl’. ‘ “… black and blue,” urged Gride, writhing with pain’ (1839) becomes ‘ “… black and blue,” urged Gride’ (1848, 1867).