G., Charles Dickens by Pen and Pencil(London: Frank T. Sabin/ John F. Dexter, 1890).MacKay, Carol Hanbery, ‘The Melodramatic Impulse in Nicholas Nickleby’, Dickens Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 3 (September 1988),

In addition, Dickens removed a number of intensifying adjectives (‘this heartless scheme’ (1839), ‘this scheme’ (1848, 1867); ‘insolence and the coarsest pride’ (1839), ‘insolence and pride’ (1848, 1867))

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:

24The Nicklebys’ social and financial uncertainties are comically echoed in the pretensions to gentility that animate the Kenwigses and Fanny Squeers, and with surprising force in Dickens’s portrayal of

Jarndyce and Jarndyce is a “ ‘dark-looking case’ ” (p. 522), says Richard, who enters Chancery “from the outermost circle of … evil” (p. 21), plunges into “ ’the mysteries’ ” (p. 650) of the impenetrable

He even has Nicholas do so in conversation with the ‘literary gentleman’, that is, the hack plagiarist who has dramatized ‘two hundred and forty-seven novels as fast as they had come out – some of them

There, the condition-of-England question has a clear answer: “Fog everywhere.” If anything is obscure about the country as represented in Bleak House,it is how it came to be in such a dire state. Referring

Rather, he is asked to collude in a childishly simple set of codes, which require, for instance, that the Indian Savage (Mr Folair) indicate his admiration for the Maiden (the Phenomenon), by stroking

But it can be enabling, too, for when we learn that Jo, ”who is of no order and no place“ (p. 602), had been befriended by Nemo, whose name, we are so helpfully reminded, means ”no one“ in Latin, we not

‘She calls me cruel – me – me – who for her sake will become a demd damp, moist, unpleasant body!’ exclaimed Mr Mantalini.Like Mrs Nickleby’s recollections, such flights of fancy display a self-sustaining,

In Bleak House,he appears to have been determined to inculcate this “infirmity” in his readers: “What connexion can there be … ?” is a question directed at us.In a novel that is extraordinary for its vast

Whereas the London of Dickens’s later novels tends to be given focus by a single institution – such as Chancery or the Marshalsea – whose narrative or symbolic significance connects all strata of society,

PREFACE TO THE CHARLES DICKENS EDITION 1867Once upon a time it was held to be a coarse and shocking circumstance that some of the characters in these pages are chosen from the most criminal and degraded

Indeed, while John Ruskin argued that the number of deaths in Bleak House(nine, by his miscount; there are more) answered “a craving of the human heart for some kind of excitement” and that such a novel

In addition, the book throws up an astonishing variety of minor characters whom Dickens hits off with insouciant brilliance: Mortimer Knag, Mrs Grudden, Mrs Blockson, Mr Snittle Timberry, the bailiffs

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