Wealthy old misanthrope Martin Chuzzlewit regards selfishness as so endemic in the Chuzzlewit family that he disinherits his grandson and his courtship of Mary Graham. As the intrigues of the plot take hold, domestic tyranny is vividly depicted in the establishment of Mr Pecksniff: public villainy - spawning blackmail and murder - is uncovered in the goings-on of the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company.
Selfishness and hambug are the sober themes of a satire which blossoms jokously in all directions, impelled by glorious characters from the arch-hypocrite Pecksniff to the inhabitants of Todgers's London boarding house and the immortal Mrs Gamp. Dickens believed, and many readers will agree, that Martin Chuzzlewit is in a hundred points immeasurably the best of my stories.