Nicholas Nickleby · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens.
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Nicholas Nickleby
major
Also known as Nicholas, Mr. Nicholas Nickleby, poor Nicholas, Dear Nicholas
When his father dies leaving the family penniless, Nicholas is packed off to teach at a Yorkshire boarding school run by the grotesque Wackford Squeers, a place where charity children are starved and beaten. Dickens deliberately made him impetuous and flawed rather than saintly, so his righteous rages against cruelty feel like a real young man's rather than a moral emblem's. His refusal to keep his head down, and his impulsive protection of the abused Smike, sets the whole plot in motion and defines the novel's argument that decency must sometimes be loud.
Ralph Nickleby
major
Also known as Mr. Ralph Nickleby, young Ralph Nickleby, Master Ralph Nickleby, Ralph Nickleby, Mr. Nickleby
Ralph lives in faded Golden Square among musicians and foreigners, enjoying a reputation for immense wealth while belonging to no trade or profession anyone can name. He greets the news of his brother's death with a shrug and immediately begins calculating what his widow and children might cost him, then schemes to turn them into instruments of profit. Cold, plausible, and never quite catchable, he is the gravity that pulls Nicholas's story downward, and the reader watches him the way one watches a man handling a knife.
Kate Nickleby
major
Also known as Kate, poor Kate, Little Kate Nickleby, little Kate Nickleby
Kate is placed at Madame Mantalini's fashionable dressmaking establishment, where the work is dull, exhausting, and humiliating, and where Miss Knag's flattery is as poisonous as open contempt. Her beauty draws the predatory attention of wealthy men, and her position exposes how little protection a poor gentlewoman has in London. Where Nicholas can storm and flee, Kate must stay and smile, and her patient endurance gives the novel its sharpest picture of what the world does to women without money.
Mrs. Nickleby
supporting
Also known as poor Mrs. Nickleby
Mrs. Nickleby means well and understands almost nothing, greeting every crisis with a story about someone she once knew whose name she has forgotten. She is easily flattered, easily misled, and utterly incapable of seeing the danger her brother-in-law represents, which makes her a burden her children must carry rather than a support. Dickens uses her torrents of inconsequential talk for comedy, but the comedy has an edge: her helplessness is exactly the kind of vulnerability that Ralph and his associates know how to exploit.
Newman Noggs
supporting
Also known as Noggs, Mr. Noggs, Mr. Newman Noggs
Newman Noggs scratches out Ralph's correspondence from a butler's pantry, his coat rusty, his nose red, his face twisted into expressions no one can read. He was once a gentleman of some means, and his fall has left him with nothing but a stubborn loyalty to the memory of Ralph's dead brother and a fierce sympathy for the man's children. He is the novel's quiet double agent, passing warnings and small kindnesses under his employer's nose, and his cracked dignity is one of Dickens's most affecting creations.
Smike
major
Also known as poor Smike, the astonished Smike, the unfortunate Smike
Smike has been at Squeers's Yorkshire school so long he cannot remember any other life, and is worked, starved, and mocked as a matter of routine. When Nicholas defies Squeers to protect him, Smike attaches himself to his rescuer with a gratitude so total it becomes the tenderest relationship in the book. He is the human cost of the school system Dickens was attacking, and his helpless devotion forces Nicholas, and the reader, to keep asking what one person owes another.
Wackford Squeers
supporting
Also known as Mr. Squeers, Squeers, Mr. Wackford Squeers
Squeers runs a boarding school built on fraud: parents pay, boys vanish into neglect, and he pockets the difference. When Smike disappears, he beats a small boy in his nightshirt to silence any talk of running away, then turns his malice on Nicholas, whose quiet disgust he cannot bully down. His cruelty is the engine that drives Nicholas out of Yorkshire and into the wider world.
Mrs. Squeers
supporting
Also known as Mrs. Squeers, Mr. and Mrs. Squeers
Mrs. Squeers rules the domestic side of Dotheboys Hall with the same brutality her husband applies in the schoolroom, dosing boys with foul medicine and grudging every crust. When Smike goes missing, she blames the new teacher for stirring rebellion and orders Nicholas off to the schoolroom without a moment's pause. Her cold appraisal of Nicholas on his first night sets the tone for the household he has entered.
Fanny Squeers
supporting
Also known as Miss Squeers, Miss Fanny Squeers, Fanny
Fanny drifts through Dotheboys Hall in a fog of self-regard, convinced that Nicholas's polite smile means something more than it does. She drops her pen, knocks heads with him, and walks away marveling at his legs, all while her parents' brutality continues around her. Her deluded crush on Nicholas makes the school's grimness briefly comic and gives the Squeers household a second, sillier face.
John Browdie
supporting
Also known as John, Mr. John Browdie, Mr. Browdie, honest John Browdie
Browdie is a local man with a loud laugh and a soft spot for anyone being treated unfairly, including the half-starved boys at Dotheboys Hall. He becomes one of the few allies Nicholas finds in Yorkshire, and his plain honesty contrasts sharply with the Squeerses' calculated cruelty. His friendship matters because it shows Nicholas that kindness can survive even in the bleakest corners of the story.
Mrs. Browdie
minor
Also known as Mrs. John Browdie, the blushing Mrs. Browdie
John Browdie's wife, formerly Tilda Price.
Arthur Gride
supporting
Also known as Gride, old Arthur Gride, old Arthur, Arthur
Gride hoards money in secret and gloats over the prospect of a forced marriage, cackling and rubbing his hands while Ralph Nickleby needles him about his jealousy and his age. When a young man bursts in to warn him off, Gride's first instinct is to cry thieves and murder, then to haggle over the bond. His cowardice and avarice make him a fitting instrument for Ralph's worst designs.
Tim Linkinwater
supporting
Also known as Tim, Mr. Linkinwater, old Tim Linkinwater, Mr. Timothy Linkinwater
Tim has kept the Cheerybles' counting-house running for decades, tending the flowers of a sick boy in the window and greeting each morning with the same gentle routine. He is the quiet moral center of the counting-house, and his friendship with Nicholas offers the young man a model of steady, unshowy goodness. His small observations about the boy and the flowers reveal the tenderness beneath his eccentric surface.
Sir Mulberry Hawk
supporting
Also known as Sir Mulberry, Hawk, Mulberry, the detested Sir Mulberry
Sir Mulberry Hawk moves through fashionable London as a man of rank, wit, and no scruples, schooling the foolish Lord Verisopht in the arts of pursuit and self-indulgence. He is the cold eye and the cruel appetite behind the nobleman's clumsy advances, and he treats Kate's distress as sport rather than warning. His presence turns the city into a place of traps for the Nicklebys, giving the novel one of its sharpest portraits of aristocratic predation.
Lord Frederick Verisopht
supporting
Also known as Richard, Lord Frederick, Verisopht, Alfred
Lord Frederick Verisopht is rich, idle, and easily led, spending his days in the orbit of Sir Mulberry Hawk, who flatters and steers him for his own amusement. His infatuation with Kate Nickleby is less malice than vanity and weakness, but it makes him a tool in a game far crueller than he understands. He matters because he shows how rank without character can be as dangerous as open villainy, and because his fate shadows the novel's moral accounting.
Madeline Bray
supporting
Also known as Miss Bray, Madeline, Bray, Miss Madeline, little Madeline
Madeline Bray lives in shabby gentility with her ailing father, Walter Bray, whose debts and self-pity make him eager to trade her hand for his own relief. She is dutiful to the point of self-erasure, and her beauty and virtue attract both Nicholas's love and the cold calculations of Ralph Nickleby and others. Her situation gives the middle of the novel its central emotional stake: whether goodness can be protected from the marketplace.
Mr. Mantalini
minor
Also known as Mr. Mantalini, Even Mr. Mantalini, the crestfallen Mr. Mantalini
A foppish and spendthrift husband of Madame Mantalini.
Madame Mantalini
minor
Also known as Madame, Poor Madame Mantalini
A fashionable dressmaker who employs Kate.
Miss La Creevy
supporting
Also known as La Creevy, Little Miss La Creevy, poor little Miss La Creevy
Miss La Creevy lets lodgings and paints portraits in her little London house, and she takes the Nicklebys in when they arrive from the country with more grief than money. She is kind, talkative, and a little vain about her art, but she is also an unprotected woman who cannot afford to be generous indefinitely, and Ralph Nickleby knows exactly how to press that nerve. She matters because she is the first small, decent world the Nicklebys find in London, and because her wavering loyalty measures how hard kindness is under pressure.
Vincent Crummles
supporting
Also known as Mr. Vincent Crummles, Mr. Crummles, Master Crummles, Crummles
Vincent Crummles runs the Portsmouth Theatre as a family business, with his wife, children, and a small corps of actors performing melodramas to sparse and unglamorous houses. He is pompous, good-natured, and utterly sincere about his art, and he offers Nicholas work and shelter when the young man has nowhere else to turn. His troupe gives the novel its comic heart and a strange, shabby dignity that contrasts sharply with the cruelties of Ralph Nickleby's London.
Mrs. Crummles
minor
Also known as Mrs. Vincent Crummles, the absent Mrs. Crummles
Vincent Crummles's wife and a member of his acting troupe.
Miss Snevellicci
minor
Also known as Snevellicci, Poor Miss Snevellicci
An actress in Crummles's troupe who takes a liking to Nicholas.
Frank Cheeryble
supporting
Also known as Mr. Cheeryble, Cheeryble, Mr. Frank Cheeryble, young Cheeryble
Frank Cheeryble is generous, impulsive, and free of the calculation that marks so many young men in the novel, and his uncles clearly dote on him. He and Nicholas become fast friends, but their affection is complicated by the fact that both admire Madeline Bray, and Frank's honesty about his own feelings is tested by loyalty. He matters because he embodies the possibility of goodness without self-interest, and because his friendship with Nicholas gives the novel a model of male affection untainted by rivalry or greed.
Charles Cheeryble
supporting
Also known as Mr. Charles, brother Charles, Charles, Mr. Charles Cheeryble
Charles Cheeryble belongs to the benevolent twin partnership that plucks Nicholas from poverty and plants him in a counting-house where kindness is policy. Where his brother Ned bubbles and blurts, Charles presides with a gentle, almost priestly gravity, unfolding wills and arranging reconciliations as if Providence kept a desk in his office. His faith in young people's honor — and his willingness to spend his own money proving it — gives the novel its moral center and its fondest hope that goodness can be practical.
Ned Cheeryble
supporting
Also known as Ned, Brother Ned, brother Ned
Ned Cheeryble shares his brother's fortune, his office, and his conviction that rescuing the deserving is simply good business. He is the more excitable of the pair, quick to forget his own assumed dignity and burst out at Frank for imagining the Cheerybles would ever marry anyone off for cash. His affectionate meddling in Nicholas's fortunes and Madeline's inheritance makes him the story's comic conscience — proof that generosity, in Dickens, need not be solemn to be sincere.
Peg Sliderskew
minor
Also known as Peg, the discreet Peg, The unconscious Peg
Arthur Gride's deaf and cunning housekeeper.
Miss Knag
minor
Also known as the kindhearted Miss Knag, Knag, the worthy Miss Knag
A dressmaker at Madame Mantalini's who is jealous of Kate.
Mrs. Wititterly
minor
Also known as Accordingly Mrs. Wititterly
A hypochondriacal society lady who employs Kate as a companion.
Mrs. Kenwigs
minor
Also known as Kenwigs, poor Mrs. Kenwigs
A neighbor of the Nicklebys in London.
Mr. Kenwigs
minor
Also known as one Mr. Kenwigs, Adopting Mr. Kenwigs
Mrs. Kenwigs's husband.
Morleena Kenwigs
minor
Also known as Morleena, Miss Morleena Kenwigs, Miss Kenwigs
The eldest Kenwigs daughter.
Mr. Lillyvick
minor
Also known as the worthy Mr. Lillyvick, Lillyvick, Mrs. Lillyvick, uncle Lillyvick
A water-rate collector and uncle to the Kenwigs family.
Henrietta Petowker
minor
Also known as Miss Petowker, the late Miss Petowker, the talented Henrietta Petowker
An actress who marries Mr. Lillyvick.
Mr. Bray
minor
Also known as Bray
Madeline's selfish and invalid father.
Tilda Price
minor
Also known as Miss Matilda Price, Miss Price, Matilda, Tilda, Tilly Price
A lively young woman from Yorkshire who marries John Browdie.
Mr. Pyke
minor
Also known as Pyke, the indefatigable Mr. Pyke
A toadying associate of Sir Mulberry Hawk.
Mr. Pluck
minor
Also known as Pluck, the watchful Mr. Pluck
Another toadying associate of Sir Mulberry Hawk.
Mr. Folair
minor
Also known as Folair, the immovable Mr. Folair
An actor in Crummles's troupe.
Mr. Lenville
minor
Also known as Lenville, the redoubtable Mr. Lenville, that Lenville
A tragedian in Crummles's troupe.
Mr. Bonney
minor
Also known as Mr. Bonney
A member of the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.
Mr. Brooker
minor
Also known as Brooker
A mysterious man with a grudge against Ralph Nickleby.
Mrs. Blockson
minor
Also known as Mrs. Blockson
A neighbor of the Kenwigs family.
Mr. Mortimer Knag
minor
Also known as Mortimer, Mr. Knag
Miss Knag's brother, a bookseller.
Mr. Godfrey Nickleby
minor
Also known as one Mr. Godfrey Nickleby
Nicholas's deceased father.
Master Percy Crummles
minor
Also known as Mr. Crummles
One of the Crummles children.
Ninetta Crummles
minor
Also known as Miss Crummles, Miss Ninetta Crummles
The infant phenomenon of the Crummles troupe.
Mr. Wititterly
minor
Also known as Mr. Wititterly
Mrs. Wititterly's henpecked husband.
Mr. Snawley
minor
Also known as Snawley, Master Snawley, young Mr. Snawley, old Mr. Snawley
A scheming father who places his sons at Dotheboys Hall.
Mrs. Snawley
minor
Also known as Mrs. Snawley
Mr. Snawley's wife.
Mr. Gregsbury
minor
Also known as Mr. Gregsbury
A pompous Member of Parliament who briefly employs Nicholas.
Mr. Snevellicci
minor
Also known as Snevellicci, Thus Mr. Snevellicci
An actor in Crummles's troupe and father of Miss Snevellicci.
Mrs. Snevellicci
minor
Also known as the unfortunate Mrs. Snevellicci
Wife of Mr. Snevellicci and mother of Miss Snevellicci.
Miss Ledrook
minor
Also known as Miss Ledrook
An actress in Crummles's troupe.
Mr. Crowl
minor
Also known as Crowl
A lodger at Newman Noggs's house.
Mr. Snittle Timberry
minor
Also known as Timberry, Mr. Timberry
A member of the Muffin Company.
Mr. Pugstyles
minor
Also known as Pugstyles
A member of the Muffin Company.
Mr. Curdle
minor
Also known as Mr. Curdle
A dramatic critic and friend of the Crummleses.
Mrs. Curdle
minor
Also known as Mrs. Curdle
Mr. Curdle's wife.
Tom Pipes
minor
Also known as Tom, Thomas
A servant of Lord Frederick Verisopht.
Mr. Scaley
minor
Also known as Scaley
A member of the Muffin Company.
Mr. Westwood
minor
Also known as Westwood
An acquaintance of Sir Mulberry Hawk.
Sir Tumley Snuffim
minor
Also known as Sir Tumley
Mrs. Wititterly's physician.
Miss Bravassa
minor
Also known as Miss Bravassa
An actress in Crummles's troupe.
Augustus Folair
minor
Also known as Augustus
An actor in Crummles's troupe.
Mr. Lumbey
minor
Also known as Mr. Lumbey
A doctor who attends the Kenwigs family.
Dr. Lumbey
minor
Also known as Dr. Lumbey
Another name for Mr. Lumbey, the doctor.
Mr. Trimmers
minor
Also known as Trimmers
A friend of the Kenwigs family.
Mrs. Grudden
minor
Also known as old Grudden, Grudden, the indefatigable Mrs. Grudden
A member of Crummles's theatrical troupe.
Phib
minor
Also known as the artful Phib
A servant of Arthur Gride.
Sir Matthew Pupker
minor
Also known as Sir Matthew Pupker
A member of the Muffin Company.
Baron Von Koeldwethout
minor
Also known as Grogzwig, the Baron of Grogzwig, Koeldwethout
A character in a story told by the Baron of Grogzwig.
The Lady Flabella
minor
Also known as Lady Flabella
A character in a novel read by Mrs. Nickleby.
Mr. Johnson
minor
Also known as the unfortunate Mr. Johnson, Johnson, blank Johnson
A pseudonym used by Nicholas when traveling with Smike.
Demmit
minor
Also known as Demmit
An acquaintance of Sir Mulberry Hawk.
Mrs. Sliderskew
minor
Also known as deaf Mrs. Sliderskew
Another name for Peg Sliderskew.
Little Bolder
minor
Also known as Bolder
A student at Dotheboys Hall.
Graymarsh
minor
Also known as Graymarsh
A student at Dotheboys Hall.
Mobbs
minor
Also known as Mobbs
A student at Dotheboys Hall.
Cobbey
minor
Also known as Cobbey
A student at Dotheboys Hall.
Master Belling
minor
Also known as Belling
A student at Dotheboys Hall.
Digby
minor
Also known as the faithful Digby
A servant of Lord Frederick Verisopht.
Captain Adams
minor
Also known as Adams
A friend of the Nickleby family.
