Penguin Classics give you the best possible editions of Charles Dickens's novels,
including all the original illustrations, useful and informative introductions, the
definitive, accurate text as it was meant to be published, a chronology of Dickens's life
and notes that fill in the background to the book. This Penguin Classics edition of
Martin Chuzzlewit also includes an appendix on the infamous Mrs Gamp.
The greed of his family has led wealthy old Martin Chuzzlewit to become suspicious and
misanthropic, leaving his grandson and namesake to make his own way in the world. And so
young Martin sets out from the Wiltshire home of his supposed champion, the scheming
architect Pecksniff, to seek his fortune in America. In depicting Martin's journey - an
experience that teaches him to question his inherited self-interest and egotism - Dickens
created many vividly realized figures: the brutish lout Jonas Chuzzlewit, plotting to gain
the family fortune; Martin's optimistic manservant, Mark Tapley; gentle Tom Pinch; and the
drunken and corrupt private nurse, Mrs Gamp. With its portrayal of greed, blackmail and
murder, and its searing satire on America Dickens's novel is a powerful and blackly comic
story of hypocrisy and redemption.
In her introduction to this Penguin Classics edition, Patricia Ingham discusses how, in
writing a story that was only meant to 'recommend goodness and innocence', Dickens
succeeded in exploring 'the intertwining of moral sensibility and brutality.'
