Martin Chuzzlewit

Moving from the sunniest farcicality to the grimmest reaches of criminal psychology, Martin Chuzzlewit is a brilliant study in selfishness and hypocrisy.

The story of an inheritance, it relates the contrasting destinies of two descendants of the brothers Chuzzlewit, both born and bred to the same heritage of selfishness, showing how one, Martin, by good fortune escapes and how the other, Jonas, does not – only to reap a fatal harvest. Peopled with such Dickens immortals as Mrs Gamp, Poll Sweedlepipe, Montague Tiggs, Chevy Slyme, it is one of Dickens’s great comic masterpieces.