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The writing of Nicholas Nickleby overlapped the serialization of Oliver Twist, and the editing of Memoirs of Grimaldi. Nicholas Nickleby, this ‘hero as a young man’ novel, was also serialized, starting in April 1838 and ending October 1839. Again some real-life people became part of the novel’s theatrics: Squeers, based on William Shaw, a bung-eyed school proprietor who had been sued in court for mistreating his charges; and garrulous Mrs Nickleby, based on Dickens’s own mother. Dickens must have been pleased with sales; the first number sold 48,000. This Dickens-like Nickleby (beside Miss Squeers) was executed by illustrator Frederick Barnard for the ‘Household Edition’, the first edition to be published after Dickens’s death in 1870.

[Oh! As soft as possible, if you please. Illustration by Frederick Barnard from page 53 of Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Household Edition.]

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By February 1838, Charles Dickens had begun Nicholas Nickleby, his third novel. Published serially between April 1838 and October 1839, he was paid £150 per number, with a bonus offered of £1500 on completion. The soon-to-be-more-famous Hablot Knight Browne (‘Phiz’) illustrated the novel. There was fieldwork involved. In 1838, both men travelled to Yorkshire to look at schools; Dotheboys Hall was the reconstituted literary result. This first book edition also contains Daniel Maclise’s engraved portrait of Dickens as well as coloured plates by ‘Peter Palette’, a pseudonym for Thomas Onwhyn, a later Punch illustrator.

[The internal economy of Dotheboys Hall. An illustration by Hablot Knight Browne in Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]

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]]> Mr Squeers by Thomas Onwhyn from Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby]]> Charles Dickens]]> ]]> The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, shows Wackford Squeers admonishing one of his unfortunate charges.]]> Charles Dickens]]> The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]]> Charles Dickens]]> The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]]> Charles Dickens]]> The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]]> Charles Dickens]]> The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]]> Charles Dickens]]>