Books

First edition, in the original monthly parts published from March 1838 to October 1839. The set conforms to Hatton & Cleaver's earliest issue points, save for the absence of the "Heads of the People" advertisement in part 8. Nicholas Nickleby followed the phenomenal success of the Pickwick Papers. To secure Nickleby, Chapman and Hall offered Dickens £150 a part, a sum ten times greater than that which he had received for Pickwick. The novel met with great public enthusiasm, which has continued unabated: Dickens's biographer Peter Ackroyd stated that the novel "has some title to being the funniest novel Dickens ever wrote; it is perhaps the funniest novel in the English language" (Ackroyd, p. 262). Twenty numbers in 19 monthly parts, as issued. Original pale blue pictorial wrappers. Housed in a green cloth solander box. Engraved portrait after D. Maclise, 39 etched plates by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz). Various contemporary ownership signatures to numbers 4, 7, 9, 12, 15, & 19/20. Some repairs and restoration to spines and around wrapper extremities, front wrapper of part 1 with repairs to longer tears and lower outer corner replaced from another copy, occasional light foxing but contents generally clean. A very good set. Eckel, pp. 64-66; Gimbel A40; Hatton & Cleaver, pp. 131-60. Peter Ackroyd, Dickens, 1990.

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is a novel by Charles Dickens. Originally published as a serial from 1838 to 1839, it was Dickens's third novel. The lengthy work follows the life of Nicholas Nickleby, a young man who must support his mother and sister after his father dies.