Martin Chuzzlewit

"Martin Chuzzlewit is, I believe the most sheerly funny of all Dickens's novels and the comic characters and scenes are written with a vigour and brio which is the equal of anything else in his oeuvre.

"I would go so far as to claim that, in Chuzzlewit, you find the most sustained passage of comic writing in English literature, namely chapters eight and nine when the Pecksniff family go to London.

"These 40 pages are written with a textured brilliance of detail and are also replete with the richest comedy - a coming together of style and humour that is unmatched in all his other novels.

"You will laugh out loud at Martin Chuzzlewit - the comedy travels effortlessly across the 170 plus years since it was written - and for that reason alone it deserves to be ranked among the greats."

—William Boyd, The Guardian

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) transformed the art of fiction. The author of numerous novels and short stories, including Great Expectations, A Tale Of Two Cities, David Copperfield, and Bleak House, he is considered a literary colossus, and a central figure in the development of the modern novel.