Finding himself on the brink of poverty after the death of his father, the young and largely naive Nicholas Nickleby, under the pressure of his cynical and pragmatic uncle, becomes a teacher in one of the notorious closed English schools... Even now, even the most trained reader is shocked by pictures of ruthless corporal punishment and humiliation of older students - teachers and younger students - elders. Closed schools, in which, according to most Victorian writers, forged the color of the British Empire, became a monstrous prison for the humanist Dickens, breaking children's destinies and characters.
