Synopsis:

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 to be hard-hearted and unsscrupulous, and Nicholas finds himself forced to make his own way in the world. His adventures gave Dickens the opportunity to portray an extraordinary gallery of rogues and eccentrics:Wackford Squeers, the tyranical headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, a school for unwanted boys; the slow-witted orphan Smike, rescued by Nicholas; and thegloriously theatrical Mr and Mrs Crummies and their daughter, the 'infant phenominon'. Like many of Dicken's novels, Nicholas Nickleby is charictarized by his outrage at cruelty and social injustice, but it is also a flamboyantly exberant work, revealing his comic genius at it's most unerring.