The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (commonly known as
Martin Chuzzlewit ) is a novel by Charles Dickens, considered the last of his picaresque novels. It was originally serialised between 1842 and 1844.
While he was writing it Dickens told a friend that he thought it was his best work thus far, but it was one of his least popular novels, judged by sales of the monthly instalments. Characters in this novel gained fame, including Pecksniff and Mrs Gamp.
The late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing read the novel in February 1888 ’for refreshment’ but felt that it showed ’incomprehensible weakness of story’.
Like nearly all of Dickens’s novels,
Martin Chuzzlewit was first published in monthly instalments. Early sales of the monthly parts were lower than those of previous works, so Dickens changed the plot to send the title character to the United States.
Dickens had visited America in 1842 in part as a failed attempt to get the US publishers to honour international copyright laws. He satirized the country as a place filled with self-promoting hucksters, eager to sell land sight unseen. In later editions, and in his second visit 24 years later to a much-changed US, he made clear it was satire and not a balanced image of the nation in a speech and then included that speech in all future editions.
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