Nicholas Nickleby Summary

Nicholas Sr. loses all of his family’s money through investments. After he dies, his family—including his son Nicholas, daughter Kate, and widow Mrs. Nickleby—travel to London. Because Nicholas Sr.’s death leaves the family in debt, they arrive in London with next to nothing. Nicholas Sr.’s brother Ralph comes to visit the family in the lodging house. Ralph urges the landlady, Miss La Creevy, to kick the Nicklebys out because they won’t be able to pay, and he has no intention of helping them. Ralph immediately dislikes Nicholas, though he feels a grudging kind of affection toward Kate. Ralph secures a job for Nicholas at a boarding school in Yorkshire called Dotheboys Hall, which is operated by Wackford Squeers. Ralph says that as long as Nicholas stays in that job and does well, he will look after Kate and Mrs. Nickleby in London.

Nicholas is dismayed by what he finds at Dotheboys Hall. Parents and guardians send unwanted and illegitimate boys to the school to be rid of them. Squeers regularly abuses those boys and forces them to do manual labor. Squeers’s treatment of one boy in particular, Smike, is especially harsh. Smike is in his early 20s and has been at Dotheboys Hall for years. Even though Smike’s family stopped paying his school fees years ago, Squeers keeps him around. He says he does it out of charity. In reality, though, Squeers abuses Smike and forces him to work at the school for no pay. At the school, Squeers’s daughter, Fanny, develops feelings for Nicholas, though Nicholas rebuffs her advances. Through Fanny, Nicholas meets her friend Matilda and Matilda’s fiancé, John.

Meanwhile, in London, Ralph finds Kate a job working for Madame Mantalini, a hatmaker and dressmaker. Ralph invites Kate to a party he throws for his business associates. He doesn’t tell Kate, but he intends to use her to attract the attention of Lord Frederick, a wealthy man whom Ralph wants as a client. At the party, one of Ralph’s colleagues, Mulberry, makes lewd comments toward Kate and accosts her. Kate returns home distraught and doesn’t go to work for three days.

When Kate returns to work, she learns that the Mantalinis’ have gone bankrupt, and so she’ll need to get a new job. She finds a job as a servant for the wealthy Wititterly family. Mulberry secures an invitation for himself and his friends, including Frederick, to the Wititterlys’ house. Mulberry and his friends begin visiting the Wititterlys’ house every day, where Mulberry harasses Kate. Ralph knows about the harassment and recognizes how wrong Mulberry’s treatment of Kate is, but he refuses to intervene because he doesn’t want to damage his working relationship with Mulberry or Frederick.

At the same time in Yorkshire, Smike runs away from Dotheboys Hall. Mrs. Squeers (Squeers’s wife) tracks him down and brings him back to the school. Squeers beats him in front of other students to show the other boys what will happen to them if they try to run away. Nicholas intervenes and gets into a violent altercation with Squeers. After Nicholas beats up Squeers, Nicholas and Smike run away from the school together. On the road, they meet the manager of a traveling theater company, Mr. Crummles. Nicholas and Smike become actors for a brief period of time in Portsmouth. Ultimately, though, Nicholas receives a letter from Ralph’s clerk, Newman (who is Nicholas’s ally), urging Nicholas to return to London immediately.

When Smike and Nicholas return to London, Nicholas overhears Mulberry and his friends talking about Kate at a bar. He gleans that Newman told him to return to London because Mulberry has been harassing Kate. Nicholas confronts Mulberry. As Mulberry tries to flee in his carriage, he and Nicholas exchange blows. The horse pulling the carriage runs off out of control while Mulberry is inside the carriage. The carriage crashes, and Mulberry is seriously injured.

The next morning, Nicholas goes to the Wititterlys’ house and tells Mr. Wititterly that Kate is quitting. Nicholas then helps Kate and Mrs. Nickleby move out of their current house, which Ralph owns, and move back into the house owned by Miss La Creevy. Nicholas writes a letter to Ralph telling Ralph that he is a disgrace, and he encloses the key to the house where Mrs. Nickleby and Kate had been staying. When Ralph receives the letter, he curses Nicholas. Ralph and Nicholas then become sworn enemies.

Nicholas goes to an employment agency to look for work. While he’s there, a beautiful woman catches his attention. He also meets a kindhearted man named Charles Cheeryble. Charles brings Nicholas to the offices of his business, the Cheeryble Brothers, which he runs with his twin brother Ned. Charles offers Nicholas a job as a bookkeeper, and Nicholas enthusiastically accepts. The Cheeryble Brothers also decide to rent a cottage they own to the Nickleby family at a low rate.

One day, the woman Nicholas noticed at the employment agency arrives at the Cheeryble Brothers. Gradually, Nicholas learns that her name is Madeline Bray, and she’s an acquaintance of the Cheeryble Brothers. Her mother recently died, and her father, Mr. Bray, is in debt. The Cheeryble Brothers have been helping her out with money to cover her father’s debts. Charles enlists Nicholas to act as an art dealer and buy artwork from Madeline so that Madeline has a steady income. As a result, Nicholas sees Madeline regularly, and his feelings for her grow deeper.

At the same time, Squeers travels to London. On the street, he sees Smike and abducts him. He takes him back to the house of Mr. Snawley—a parent of two boys at Dotheboys Hall—and locks Smike in a room. John and Matilda have also traveled to London with Fanny and go to dinner at Mr. Snawley’s house. When John learns that Smike is being held captive, he helps Smike escape. After Smike escapes, he eventually returns to the Nicklebys’ house. Ralph and Squeers put a scheme in motion to try and make Smike return to Dotheboys Hall by saying that Mr. Snawley is Smike’s biological father, and he thus gets to tell Smike what to do. Ralph, Squeers, and Mr. Snawley go to the Nicklebys’ house and present forged documents to try and prove their case. Nicholas says that Smike can make his own decisions, and Smike says he wants to stay with the Nicklebys. Ralph promises Nicholas that he will break Nicholas’s spirit.

Meanwhile, Newman learns that one of Ralph’s colleagues, a 75-year-old money lender named Arthur Gride, intends to marry Madeline. By marrying her, Arthur intends to defraud and swindle her out of money that she does not know is rightfully hers. Arthur and Ralph convince Madeline to go through with the wedding by promising to eliminate her father’s debt and give him an allowance if she does. On the day of the wedding, Nicholas arrives at Madeline’s house with Kate to try and stop the marriage. Nicholas gets into an altercation with Ralph. Then, they all hear a thud followed by a scream from a room upstairs. When they rush upstairs, they see Mr. Bray dead on the floor. Nicholas takes hold of Madeline and runs with her out of the house. Since Mr. Bray is dead, there’s no reason to go through with the wedding. Madeline then goes to live with the Nicklebys.

When Ralph and Arthur return to Arthur’s home after the scene at the Brays’ house, they find that Arthur’s servant, Peg, has stolen his papers. One of those papers is the document that shows that Madeline is the rightful heir to a substantial sum of money. Ralph is convinced that Madeline will marry Nicholas. If that happens, Nicholas will inherit that money, which will make him wealthier and give him more power to fight against Ralph. Ralph enlists Squeers to steal the document back from Peg.

Around the same time, Smike becomes dangerously ill. A doctor recommends that he go to the country to rest and try and recover. The two pass a peaceful couple of weeks together in Devonshire, but Smike’s condition continues to deteriorate. One day, Smike begins screaming. He says that he saw the man who first took him to Dotheboys Hall hiding behind a tree. Nicholas reassures Smike that no one is there. A few days later, Smike dies.

When Nicholas returns to London, the Nickleby family mourns Smike’s death. Nicholas also learns that Frank, the Cheeryble Brothers’ nephew, has proposed to Kate. Since Kate has no money or social standing to offer Frank, she declines his proposal. Nicholas still has feelings for Madeline but because he also has nothing to offer her in terms of money or social standing, he thinks that he would make a poor suitor and husband for her. Nicholas talks to Charles about those issues. After that conversation, Madeline moves out of the Nicklebys’ house, and Frank visits the house less often.

After six weeks of trying to track down the document Ralph wants, Squeers convinces Peg that he’s a lawyer who can help her sift through the stolen documents. In Peg’s apartment, he tells Peg which documents to keep and which to burn. He finally finds the document that Ralph wants. Just then, Newman and Frank sneak into the apartment. Newman knocks out Squeers, and Peg and Squeers are subsequently handed over to the authorities and arrested for destroying legal documents.

Ned and Charles work behind the scenes to get to the bottom of what’s going on. They ultimately call Ralph to come and meet them. They tell Ralph that the legal case against him is growing now that Peg and Squeers are in custody. They warn him to leave London and reform his ways, though Ralph refuses. Ned and Charles then get more information from one of Ralph’s former employees, Mr. Brooker. They call Ralph in for a second meeting. During that meeting, Brooker tells Ralph that Ralph is Smike’s biological father. Brooker says he traveled to Devonshire to tell Smike but lost his nerve when Smike saw him and began screaming. Ralph is shocked, but as Brooker shares more details, Ralph knows that it’s true. Ralph is driven to agony by the knowledge that he abused his own son, Smike, while Smike idolized Ralph’s nemesis, Nicholas. Ralph then hangs himself in his house.

A few days later, Charles and Ned invite the Nicklebys to dinner. At that dinner, Charles tells Nicholas that he approves of both Nicholas’s marriage to Madeline and Frank’s marriage to Kate. The two couples become engaged and are married on the same day not long after. After Ned and Charles retire, Nicholas and Frank become partners in the Cheeryble Brothers business. Nicholas becomes wealthy. He lives happily with Madeline and their children. Kate and Frank, along with their children, live nearby.