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
Mary Hogarth author who studied Dickens, believed that Dickens wanted to "give the story a different ending." Hogarth is also seen as the inspiration for Little Nell in "The Old Curiosity Shop". Nell had many traits that Dickens associated to Howarth, including describing Nell as "young, beautiful and good", and Nell also dies suddenly in the book. Other characters believed to have been inspired by Mary include Kate Nickleby, the 17-year-old sister of the hero of the novel "Nicholas Nickleby"; Agnes Wickfield, the heroine in "David Copperfield" (her character was a mixture of both Mary and Georgina, another of Dickens' sister-in-laws); Ruth