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Set partly in America, which Dickens had visited in 1842, 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, with increasingly desperate crime for the other. This powerful black comedy involves hypocrisy, greed and blackmail, as well as the most famous of Dickens's grotesques, Mrs Gamp. In her introduction to this new 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.'

Although enjoyed my many as a masterpiece of Dickens’ comic writing, Martin Chuzzlewit has long been underrated by professional critics. This volume redresses the balance by devoting its attention to a full critical discussion of the novel and by including a full survey of the critical positions held in the past. As well as discussing the themes of selfishness and hypocrisy, the history of the text is also explored, as is the complex relationship between Dickens and the United States which played a great part in the development of the novel and exerted considerable influence on it early reception.