Nicholas Nickleby, novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in 20 monthly installments under the pseudonym “Boz” from 1838 to 1839 and published in book form in 1839.
An early novel, this melodramatic tale of young Nickleby’s adventures as he struggles to seek his fortune in Victorian England resembles The Pickwick Papers in structure, although not always in tone. Throughout, comic events are interspersed with Dickens’s moving indictment of society’s ill treatment of children and the cruelty of the educational system.