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Martin Chuzzlewit Paperback - 1991

by Charles Dickens


About this book

While writing Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens declared it 'immeasurably the best of my stories.' 

Set partly in America, the novel includes a searing satire on the United States. Martin Chuzzlewit is the story of two Chuzzlewits, Martin and Jonas, who have inherited the characteristic Chuzzlewit selfishness. It contrasts their diverse fates of moral redemption and worldly success for one, and increasingly desperate crime for the other. This powerful comedy involves hypocrisy, greed, and blackmail, as well as the most famous of Dickens's grotesques, Mrs. Gamp.

Martin Chuzzlewit is considered one of Dickens's last picaresque novels. 

Summary

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.

First Edition Identification

Martin Chuzzlewit was published in 19 monthly installments, each comprising 32 pages of text and two illustrations by Hablot K. "Phiz" Browne. Published in 1842-1844. 

The first compiled book edition was published in1844 by Chapman & Hall.


Details

  • Title Martin Chuzzlewit
  • Author Charles Dickens
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition [ Edition: Repri
  • Publisher Heinemann (Txt), Troy, Missouri, U.S.A.
  • Date April 1991
  • ISBN 9780749307592
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Martin Chuzzlewit

Martin Chuzzlewit

by Dickens, Charles

  • Used
  • very good
  • Paperback
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Used - Very Good
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Paperback
ISBN 13
9780749307592
ISBN 10
0749307595
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Description:
Paperback. Very Good.
Item Price
$1.50
$10.81 shipping to USA