Nicholas Nickleby

"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."

Family ruin, Dotheboys rebellion, Smike's story, Madeline rescue, and Cheeryble redemption form picaresque architecture with a reformist spine, so plot scores 87.

There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr. Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken him for the same reason.

Nicholas, Smike, Squeers, Ralph, Kate, and the Cheerybles form Dickens's most explicitly typed moral roster without flattening into allegory only, so cast scores 90.

Smike and Newman Noggs, who in his impatience had returned home long before the time agreed upon, sat before the fire, listening anxiously to every footstep on the stairs, and the slightest sound that stirred within the house, for the approach of Nicholas. Time had worn on, and it was growing late.

Sixty-five chapters of picaresque incident with glorious set-pieces but substantial padding; Dotheboys and Cheeryble arcs provide structure amid digression, so pace scores 84.

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.

Peak Dickensian comic-satiric energy — Squeers's advertisement and Dotheboys horrors in speakable, theatrical cadences that helped reform real Yorkshire schools, so prose scores 89.

It was with a heavy heart, and many sad forebodings which no effort could banish, that Kate Nickleby, on the morning appointed for the commencement of her engagement with Madame Mantalini, left the city when its clocks yet wanted a quarter of an hour of eight, and threaded her way alone, amid the noise and bustle of the streets, towards the west end of London.

Devonshire genealogy, London financial district, Dotheboys Hall, Crummles theatre, and Portsmouth map early-Victorian England from boarding school to counting house, so world scores 88.

There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr. Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere attachment.

Ch.1's ironic genealogy establishes Dickens's comic-moral voice before the Squeers advertisement delivers the first shock, so hook scores 85.

"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."

Social reform through serialized fiction — Dotheboys chapters directly contributed to closing abusive Yorkshire schools; the novel as public intervention, so innov scores 86.

When her term of mourning had expired, Madeline gave her hand and fortune to Nicholas; and, on the same day and at the same time, Kate became Mrs. Frank Cheeryble. The business began to be carried on in the names of 'Cheeryble and Nickleby,' so that Mrs. Nickleby's prophetic anticipations were realised at last.

Double wedding, Cheeryble partnership, benevolence rewarded and Ralph destroyed — morally schematic but satisfying, so ending scores 87.