Left penniless after his feckless father's death, young Nicholas Nickleby has no choice but to make his own way in the world. For the sake of his mother and sister, he is forced by his hard-hearted uncle to take a post as an assistant master at Dotheboys Hall, a school for unwanted boys, run by the cruel and tyrannical headmaster Wackford Squeers. But this is only the beginning of Nicholas's adventures in this most entertaining of Charles Dickens's novels. We follow the progress of Nicholas and his slow-witted companion Smike on their travels and encounter a supporting cast of delectable characters, including the rumbustious Crummles's theatre company with its talented performing pony, the dastardly Sir Mulberry Hawk, the delightful Mrs Nickleby, the preposterous Kenwigs and many more. Like many of Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby is characterised by his criticism of cruelty and social injustice, but above all it is one of the greatest comic masterpieces of nineteenth-century literature.