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
Tom Tiddler's Ground Bacon and variants of Tag. "Tom Tiddler's Ground" is the name of an 1861 short story by Charles Dickens, and the phrase "Tom Tidler's ground" appears in his novels "Nicholas Nickleby", "David Copperfield" and "Dombey and Son". "Tom Tiddler's Ground" is the title of a 1931 poem and a 1931 anthology of children's poetry edited by Walter de la Mare, and a 1934 novel by Edward Shanks. E. F. Benson mentions "Tom Tiddler's Ground" in his 1935 novel "The Worshipful Lucia". "Tom Tiddler's Ground" is the name given to a piece of waste land in the 1962 children's novel "No