Nicholas Nickleby
52 votes
✒ Author | Charles Dickens |
📖 Pages | 1461 |
⏰ Reading time | 55 hours 30 minutes |
💡 Originally published | 1839 |
🌏 Original language | English |
📌 Type | Novels |
📌 Genres | Adventure, Psychological, Realism, Satire, irony, Social |
📌 Sections | Adventure novel , Psychological novel , Realistic novel , Social novel |
Table of contents
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Chapter 1 | 1 |
Chapter 2 | 11 |
Chapter 3 | 30 |
Chapter 4 | 50 |
Chapter 5 | 74 |
Chapter 6 | 93 |
Chapter 7 | 133 |
Chapter 8 | 149 |
Chapter 9 | 173 |
Chapter 10 | 200 |
Chapter 11 | 227 |
Chapter 12 | 236 |
Chapter 13 | 257 |
Chapter 14 | 282 |
Chapter 15 | 303 |
Chapter 16 | 328 |
Chapter 17 | 365 |
Chapter 18 | 382 |
Chapter 19 | 407 |
Chapter 20 | 437 |
Chapter 21 | 459 |
Chapter 22 | 483 |
Chapter 23 | 510 |
Chapter 24 | 533 |
Chapter 25 | 562 |
Chapter 26 | 588 |
Chapter 27 | 609 |
Chapter 28 | 633 |
Chapter 29 | 663 |
Chapter 30 | 680 |
Chapter 31 | 710 |
Chapter 32 | 724 |
Chapter 33 | 744 |
Chapter 34 | 759 |
Chapter 35 | 790 |
Chapter 36 | 822 |
Chapter 37 | 837 |
Chapter 38 | 866 |
Chapter 39 | 894 |
Chapter 40 | 910 |
Chapter 41 | 940 |
Chapter 42 | 963 |
Chapter 43 | 985 |
Chapter 44 | 1012 |
Chapter 45 | 1038 |
Chapter 46 | 1061 |
Chapter 47 | 1084 |
Chapter 48 | 1113 |
Chapter 49 | 1133 |
Chapter 50 | 1159 |
Chapter 51 | 1184 |
Chapter 52 | 1206 |
Chapter 53 | 1229 |
Chapter 54 | 1258 |
Chapter 55 | 1280 |
Chapter 56 | 1298 |
Chapter 57 | 1320 |
Chapter 58 | 1340 |
Chapter 59 | 1351 |
Chapter 60 | 1377 |
Chapter 61 | 1394 |
Chapter 62 | 1409 |
Chapter 63 | 1420 |
Chapter 64 | 1440 |
Chapter 65 | 1457 |
Work in other languages
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Chapter 1
Introduces all the Rest
There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken him for the same reason. Thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love.
Some ill-conditioned persons who sneer at the life-matrimonial, may perhaps suggest, in this place, that the good couple would be better likened to two principals in a sparring match, who, when fortune is low and backers scarce, will chivalrously set to, for the mere pleasure of the buffeting; and in one respect indeed this comparison would hold good; for, as the adventurous pair of the Fives' Court will afterwards send round a hat, and trust to the bounty of the lookers-on for the means of regaling themselves, so Mr Godfrey Nickleby and his partner, the honeymoon being over, looked out wistfully into the world, relying in no inconsiderable degree upon chance for the improvement of their means. Mr Nickleby's income, at the period of his marriage, fluctuated between sixty and eighty pounds per annum.
There are people enough in the world, Heaven knows! and even in London (where Mr Nickleby dwelt in those days) but few complaints prevail, of the population being scanty. It is extraordinary how long a man may look among the crowd without discovering the face of a friend, but it is no less true. Mr Nickleby looked, and looked, till his eyes became sore as his heart, but no friend appeared; and when, growing tired of the search, he turned his eyes homeward, he saw very little there to relieve his weary vision. A painter who has gazed too long upon some glaring colour, refreshes his dazzled sight by looking upon a darker and more sombre tint; but everything that met Mr Nickleby's gaze wore so black and gloomy a hue, that he would have been beyond description refreshed by the very reverse of the contrast.
At length, after five years, when Mrs Nickleby had presented her husband with a couple of sons, and that embarassed gentleman, impressed with the necessity of making some provision for his family, was seriously revolving in his mind a little commercial speculation of insuring his life next quarter-day, and then falling from the top of the Monument by accident, there came, one morning, by the general post, a black-bordered letter to inform him how his uncle, Mr Ralph Nickleby, was dead, and had left him the bulk of his little property, amounting in all to five thousand pounds sterling.
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