Book description
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SIMON CALLOW
Wealthy old Martin Chuzzlewit is surrounded by a host of grasping,
unscrupulous relatives and suspects the family vices of selfishness
and greed are already showing in his grandson. The younger Martin is
therefore cast out upon the world to learn to fend for himself.
Apprenticed to the oily hypocrite Peckniff, he meets both the
sweet-tempered Tom Pinch and the irrepressible Mark Tapley, with whom
he sets forth to America to find his fortune. Dickens created some of
his most gleefully repulsive and enduring characters in this tale of
corruption and virtue, murder and unrequited love.
Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 in Landport in
Portsmouth. His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office who often
ended up in financial trouble. When Dickens was twelve years' old he was
sent to work in a shoe polish factory because his father had been
imprisoned for debt. In 1833 he began to publish short stories and
essays in newspapers and magazines.
The Pickwick Papers
, his first commercial success, was published in 1836, the same year
that he married Catherine Hogarth. The serialisation of
Oliver Twi
st began in 1837 while
The Pickwick Papers
was still running. Many other novels followed and Dickens became a
celebrity in America as well as Britain. He also set up and edited the
journals
Household Words
(1850-9) and
All the Year Round
(1859-70). Charles Dickens died on 9 June 1870 leaving his last novel,
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished. He is buried in Westminster
Abbey.
