Ranging from sunny farce to grimly acute criminal psychology, in Martin Chuzzlewit Charles Dickens level his characteristically sharp wit and piercing social criticism at the twin vices of selfishness and hypocrisy. Two descendants of the brothers Chuzzlewit, both born and bred a heritage of selfishness, proceed toward contrasting destinies: Martin by good fortune escapes, while Jonas reaps a fatal harvest. Such Dickens immortals as Mrs. Gamp, Poll Sweedlepipe, Montague Tiggs, Chevy Slyme, make this novel a comic masterpiece.

Charles Dickens was born in a little house in Landport, Portsea, England, on February 7, 1812. The second of eight children, he grew up in a family frequently beset by financial insecurity. At the age of eleven. Dickens was taken out of school and sent to work in a London packing warehouse, where his job was to paste labels on bottles for six shillings a week. His father, John Dickens, was a warmhearted but improvident man. When he was condemned to Marshalsea Prison for unpaid debts, he unwisely agreed that Charles should stay in lodgings and continue working while the rest of the joined him in the jail. This three-month separation caused Charles much pain; his experiences as a child alone in a huge city--cold, with barely enough to eat--haunted him for the rest of his life.