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
Racism in the work of Charles Dickens to the degree that Dickens did. In Collins own work "A Sermon for the Sepoys", he preaches to the Indian mutineers from an Indian sacred text, not a Christian one. Collins disassociates himself from Dickens privately expressed desire to exterminate the Indian race, but instead appeals to their capacity for moral goodness. Moreover, Collins' famous novel "The Moonstone" suggests that it is really the Indians who were mainly on the defensive during the mutiny, not the British, contrary to the prevalent impression given by the British press. Grace Moore observes that after a similar uprising in Jamaica, Dickens did not