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''I plainly see to what foul uses all this money will be put ... sowing perjury, hatred, and lies among near kindred, where there should be nothing but love''

Old Martin Chuzzlewit, in despair at a family more interested in his wealth than his wellbeing, drives out his grandson and namesake. While the younger Martin leaves to make his own way in the world, love of money drives the hypocritical Pecksniff into scheming his way closer to the older man, and compels Jonas Chuzzlewit to even darker deeds.

Dickens thought Martin Chuzzlewit ''in a hundred points immeasurably the best of my stories''. A sinister, funny novel of greed, selfishness, blackmail and murder, it also sees Dickens's scathing moral sense make the voyage to America.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.