“The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby” may be one of Charles Dickens’s lesser-known works, but it is well-represented in WPI’s Fellman Dickens Collection, one of the richest collections of Dickens’s work and a premier resource for the region.
In fact, “Nicholas Nickleby” has its own shelf in the Fellman Dickens Reading Room at the university’s
Gordon Library, and the collection includes the novel as it first appeared in serial form, along with an engraved steel plate used to print one of the original illustrations.
So when Joel J. Brattin, professor of Humanities & Arts at WPI and resident Dickens scholar, was invited to co-edit a recently published two-volume edition of “Nicholas Nickleby” for Oxford University Press, he had a good place to start.
The novel follows the adventures of its namesake, a young hero who finds himself working at a school notorious for the cruel treatment of its pupils. Brattin said Dickens was truly finding his voice when he wrote “Nickleby,” which, like many of Dickens’s works, was initially published in serial form in 32-page installments.
“His social conscience is fully engaged, and his criticisms of personal and institutional cruelties are powerful,” Brattin said. “This is also his first novel to have a young man who must work for a living as his hero.”
Brattin’s work with Oxford University Press on the novel stretches back eight years, and one of his co-editors, Elizabeth James, had been working on “Nicholas Nickleby” years before that. He said the process involves poring over manuscripts and other original documents to look for clues about how Dickens originally intended the novel to be understood. The new volumes will serve as the gold standard Dickens scholars will turn to when examining the work.
