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THE

LIFE AND ADVENTURES

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY PHIZ.

LONDON:

CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186, STRAND.

MDCCCXXXIX.

W. C. MACREADY, ESQ.,¹

THE FOLLOWING PAGES

ARE INSCRIBED,

AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF ADMIRATION AND REGARD

BY HIS FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION, 1839

It has afforded the Author great amusement and satisfaction, during the progress of this work, to learn from country friends and from a variety of ludicrous statements concerning himself in provincial newspapers, that more than one Yorkshire schoolmaster lays claim to being the original of Mr Squeers. One worthy, he has reason to believe, has actually consulted authorities learned in the law, as to his having good grounds on which to rest an action for libel; another has meditated a journey to London, for the express purpose of committing an assault and battery upon his traducer; a third perfectly remembers being waited on last January twelve-month by two gentlemen, one of whom held him in conversation while the other took his likeness; and, although Mr Squeers has but one eye, and he has two, and the published sketch does not resemble him¹(whoever he may be) in any other respect, still he and all his friends and neighbours know at once for whom it is meant, because – the character is solike him.

While the Author cannot but feel the full force of the compliment thus conveyed to him, he ventures to suggest that these contentions may arise from the fact, that Mr Squeers is the representative of a class, and not of an individual. Where imposture, ignorance, and brutal cupidity, are the stock in trade of a small body of men, and one is described by these characteristics, all his fellows will recognise something belonging to themselves, and each will have a misgiving that the portrait is his own.

To this general description, as to most others, there may be some exceptions; and although the Author neither saw nor heard of any in the course of an excursion which he made into Yorkshire, before he commenced these adventures, or before or since, it affords him much more pleasure to assume their existence than to doubt it.

The inspiration