A young man fights to save his mother and sisterand a group of abused schoolboysin this novel of hardship and heroism from the great Victorian writer. Suddenly fatherless and penniless, young Nicholas Nickleby can find no help for himself and his family.

His uncle Ralph may be rich, but he is neither a kind nor an honorable manso it is up to Nicholas to take responsibility. His adventures in Victorian England will take Nicholas to a job at a boys' school run by a brutal and dictatorial headmaster, a London slum, and a theater troupe where he works under an assumed nameand into a web of revenge, blackmail, and kidnappingas he struggles to overcome the evil forces arrayed against him. ';The novel has everything... a supporting cast of heroes, villains and eccentrics, set in a London where vast wealth and desperate poverty live cheek-by-jowl.' The Times