When Charles Dickens wrote Nicholas Nickleby, between March 1838 and September 1839, he was a vivacious young author whose creative powers seemed boundless. Nickleby would be his third novel to be published but he began it within days of completing his first, The Pickwick Papers, having signed a contract for it on 24 November 1837. (His collection of stories, Sketches By Boz, was completed before Pickwick but was, as its title implies, a series of disconnected interludes rather than a ‘novel' as such.) Four months later, when he actually began writing Nickleby, at least half of his second novel, Oliver Twist, was still to be completed. By this contract, therefore, Dickens bound himself to producing two full-length novels simultaneously. Thus, between February and October 1838 he was writing monthly instalments of both Oliver Twist and...
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Citation: Garner-Jones, Susan. "Nicholas Nickleby". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 June 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3280, accessed 09 June 2026.]
