Martin Chuzzlewit is Charles Dickens comic masterpiece about which his biographer Forster noted that it marked a crucial phase in the authors development as he began to delve deeper into the springs of character. Old Martin Chuzzlewit tormented by the greed & selfishness of his family effectively drives his grandson young Martin to undertake a voyage to America. It is a voyage which will have crucial consequences not only for young Martin but also for his grandfather & his grandfathers servant Mary Graham with whom young Martin is in love. The commercial swindle of the Anglo-Bengalee company & the fraudulent Eden Land Corporation have a topicality in our own time. This strong sub-plot shows evidence of Dickens mastery of crime where characters such as the criminal Jonas Chuzzlewit the old nurse Mrs Gamp & the arch-hypocrite Seth Pecksniff are the equal to any in his other great novels. Generations of readers have also delighted in Dickens wonderful description of the London boarding-house
- Todgers.