Why a Booktrail?
1800s: The story of one boy and his family and his will to survive
Nicholas Nickleby
What you need to know before your trail
fter a poor investment that results in the loss of all his money, Nicholas Nickleby’s father dies, leaving Nicholas to look after his mother and Kate, his younger sister. Nicholas’s unpleasant, hateful Uncle Ralph finds Nicholas a low-paying job as an assistant to Wackford Squeers, who works as the schoolmaster at Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire. Squeers is unpleasant, and only has one eye.
He learns that Squeers takes unwanted children into his school and forces them to live under terrible conditions, pocketing most of the money their parents send for their upkeep.
Fanny Squeers, Wackford’s daughter, takes a liking to Nicholas, and convinces herself that Nicholas loves her. When he tells her that he does not, she starts to make life difficult for Nicholas and for his friend, Smike. The two friends later set out for London. Nicholas is keen to know about his mother and sister who are now in London, having been evicited from their home
Nicholas and Smike head to Portsmouth, intent on becoming sailors. Instead, a theater company hires Nicholas.
What will happen to the family and will they ever be reunited again?
Locations
Reset- England - Portsmouth
- A: Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum
- B: New Theatre Royal
- C: St Georges Hall
- England - Yorkshire
- D: "Dotheboys Hall"
- E: Greta Bridge
- England - London
- F: Charles Dickens Museum
Travel Guide
Portsmouth
The only Dickens novel to be set in the city where he was born. A few other places of note:
Mile End Terrace where he was born on 7 February 1812 (now the Birthplace museum)
Highland Road Cemetery. – Dickens’ first love Maria Beadnell and his mistress Ellen Ternan are buried at the city’s Highland Road Cemetery.
Nicholas Nickleby – New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth is the very theatre where Nicholas and his friend join.
The author wrote about the docks and the people who lived there in many of his books, and although he set most of his novels in London as well as other cities, Portsmouth was always home:
“I was born at Portsmouth, an English seaport town, principally remarkable for mud, jews and sailors,” wrote Charles Dickens in 1838.
Portsmouth is still very important to the Dickens’ legacy as a number of his descendants later joined the navy and lived in and around Portsmouth.
Yorkshire
‘”EDUCATION. – At Mr Wackford Squeers’s Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled. Mr Squeers is in town, and attends daily, from one till four, at the Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill. N.B. An able assistant wanted. Annual salary 5 pounds. A Master of Arts would be preferred.”
London
The main setting for the story – especially the slums and the docks. You should not miss the museum which was the city home of the author himself.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Nicholas Nickleby
Destination : Portsmouth, London, Yorkshire Author/Guide: Charles Dickens Departure Time: 1800s
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