Nicholas Nickleby

Abstract

Composition Just as the composition of Oliver Twist overlapped with that of Pickwick, Dickens began a new novel while Oliver Twist was still in progress (its composition was in the event to occupy him for about another nine months, that is, until he was well into Nickleby). Nor was this by any means the whole tale of his staggering commitments at this stage of his career. Towards the end of January 1838 he wrote that ‘my month’s work has been dreadful — Grimaldi, the anonymous book for Chapman and Hall, Oliver, and the Miscellany. They are all done, thank God, and I start on my pilgrimage to the cheap schools of Yorkshire (a mighty secret of course) next Monday Morning’. ‘Grimaldi’ was his edition of a life of the famous clown; ‘the anonymous book’ was Sketches of Young Gentlemen; ‘Oliver’ was of course the current number of the novel; and at the same time he was planning to collaborate with Harrison Ainsworth on a book to be entitled The Lions of London — a project that was, not surprisingly, abandoned. On 30 January he set out with his illustrator Browne on the ‘pilgrimage’ to Yorkshire, to see at first-hand the notorious boarding schools and, as it turned out, to make the acquaintance of Mr Squeers’ prototype. He was obviously eager to begin the new book and, back in London, began it on 6 February; within three days the first chapter was finished.