Victorians! discussion

Welcome to our group read of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens!

Like most of Dickens' novels, Martin Chuzzlewit was also published in monthly instalments. They appeared between January 1843 and July 1844. The main theme of the novel is selfishness, which is satirized in Dickens's own style. Although Dickens considered the novel his best work at the time, it didn't become a commercial success as he had hoped.

Source: Wikipedia

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He was born in Portsmouth on 7th February 1812 to John Dickens, a naval clerk, and Elizabeth Dickens. Charles’s father, John Dickens had a poor head for finances and was extravagant, always living beyond their means. Because of this reason, the family remained poor. But despite their poverty, Charles’s early childhood was a happy one. With his father imprisoned in 1824 for debt, things turned upside down, and Charles at the age of twelve was sent for work in Warren’ Blacking factory to support family finances. After his father's release, he was able to continue his education for another three years.

Charles Dickens’s literary success began in 1836 with his serial publication of The Pickwick Papers . The success and the wide popularity of the story secured his place as a novelist. He wrote fifteen novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories, and non-fiction articles. His works enjoyed unparalleled popularity in his lifetime. And even today, his works are still widely read. Many consider Charles Dickens as the greatest novelist the Victorian era produced. Given the popularity his works have retained over time, this cannot be doubted.

A comprehensive biography can be found in the Victorian web
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/d...,
in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles..., and Biography https://www.biography.com/writer/char...

Free ebook can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/968

Free audiobook can be found in LibriVox
https://librivox.org/the-life-and-adv...
(This is only one version. There are a few others if you want to try out.)

If you have Audible, you may find a free audiobook there. (Audible UK has it free)

You can also find a free Kindle edition from Kindle Unlimited.