The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (play) reception was enthusiastic, critical reception was mixed. Frank Rich in "New York Times" reported dull passages piling up as "dead weight", while John Simon in the "New York Magazine" felt that the work was a "middlebrow enterprise" doing "scant justice" to the novel. In contrast Mel Gussow, again in "The New York Times", noted that ""Nicholas Nickleby" remains true to Dickens – many of the lines are taken directly from the novel, dialogue as well as narration – and to first principles of theater" when describing the RSC's recast production in 1986. Playwright and reviewer Thomas Hischak, writing in retrospect
History of modern literature 1844 Alexandre Dumas, père published a novel "The Three Musketeers" ("Les Trois Mousquetaires") and wrote "The Count of Monte Cristo" which was published in installments over the next two years. William Makepeace Thackeray published "The Luck of Barry Lyndon". In Britain Charles Dickens published several of his books in installments in magazines: "The Pickwick Papers", followed, in the next few years, by "Oliver Twist" (1837–1839), "Nicholas Nickleby" (1838–1839), "The Old Curiosity Shop" (1840–1841), "Barnaby Rudge" (1841), "A Christmas Carol" (1843) and "Martin Chuzzlewit" (1843–1844). In America a version of the penny dreadful became popularly known as a "dime novel". In