Nicholas Nickleby [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION "F Dickens made his reputation with Pirkwick Papers, he established .it with Nicholas Nickleby, and when we consider the conditions under which this latter book was written, it is perhaps surprising that he should have done so. On the success of Pickwick, Dickens seems to have made every tactical blunder that a yoxuig writer can make. It is not unnatural, of course, that he should have made them. He had been poor and neglected and ill-nourished. He found himself suddenly famous and respected, with abundant opportunities for earning a generous livelihood. He had no longer to ask people to buy. Publishers were beseeching him to sell. He had just married. He was shortly to become a father. The prospect dazzled him. He accepted practically every commission to write that was brought to him. With Pickwick still appearing in monthly parts, he agreed to undertake the editorship of a new magazine to be called Bentley's Miscellany, and to contribute to it a serial—Oliver Twist—the first instalment of which appeared in February, 1837. With Pickwick finished, but Oliver Twist only half written, he agreed to deliver to Chapman and Hall, his publishers, in March of the next year the first part of Nicholas Nickleby, and further equal parts on the same day of each of the successive nineteen months. And, in addition, he promised to deliver to Mr. Bentley complete by November, 1838, the manuscript of Barnaby Rudge. Anthony Trollope made a practice of finishing one book in the evening and beginning its successor the next morning. But Dickens was at this stage of his career not only beginning one book while he was still at work upon another, but was promising a third before he could be sure of completing either. If ever a novelist might have been expected to ruin his prospects, by the unconsidered acceptance of commissions, Dickens is that man. He never seems to have recognised the fickle nature of popular taste, to have said to himself, ' I have had the amazing good fortune to win success at once. But I have some forty or fifty years in front of me. I must be careful. I must husband my resources.' In a mood of supreme self-confidence he strode forward as only a man of his intense vitality could have done. In spite of the almost inconceivable strain of writing two stories at a time, he made a success of Oliver Twist, and a triumph of Nicholas Nickleby. He was, however, intensely relieved when the last page of Nickleby was written. And as we read this book between which 15