Old Martin Chuzzlewit is a wealthy old man beset with health problems, who sees everyone around him—family, friends, and strangers—as after his money. He has isolated himself from society, keeping with him only a young woman, Mary, whom he raised as an orphan. He has told her she will inherit nothing from him, to ensure that her service is purely for service’s sake.

Young Martin Chuzzlewit, for whom the novel is named, is the elder’s grandson. He loves his grandfather and is beloved by him, until young Martin and Mary fall in love with one another. Old Martin promptly disowns young Martin, and throws him out. Young Martin then signs on as an apprentice to a local architect, and there meets Tom Pinch, a former student who is now the architect’s dogsbody.

The rest of the novel follows young Martin and Tom and the usual Dickensian cast of supporting characters on their adventures together and apart, including a disastrous trip to the United States for young Martin. The trip provides Dickens the opportunity to skewer American sensibilities as he had so often British ones.