Synopses & Reviews
When John Harmon—who has been left a fortune if he will marry the girl his miserly father chose for him—is found floating dead in the Thames, he sets in motion a story overflowing with cases of deception and mistaken identity, of murder and attempted murder, of sin and redemption. The influence of the notorious Harmon inheritance ripples through a large cast of vividly drawn characters from every level of society, including Noddy Boffin, known as “the Golden Dustman”; the one-legged villain Silas Wegg; willful Bella Wilfer; saintly Lizzie Hexam; the sharp-witted doll’s dressmaker Jenny Wren; the social-climbing Veneerings; the ruthless speculator Fascination Fledgeby; and the river-scavenging corpse robbers Gaffer Hexam and Rogue Riderhood. Out of this flurry of invention Dickens creates in
Our Mutual Friend a portrait of a city and a civilization that is at once indignant, compassionate, and utterly unforgettable.
Charles Dickens’s last completed novel features one of his most surreal and haunting visions of London, shadowed by towering dust heaps that supply the corrupting riches at the heart of the plot and washed by the dark river that winds its way insistently through the story.
This edition reprints the original Everyman’s preface by G. K. Chesterton and features forty illustrations by Marcus Stone.
Synopsis
Introduction by Andrew Sanders
Synopsis
'Our Mutual Friend' is crammed with narratives of concealment and mistaken identity, of murder and attempted murder, of sin and redemption, and is continually propelled by a satiric impulse and a theatricality almost surreal in their power.
Synopsis
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)Introduction by Andrew Sanders
About the Author
Richard T. Gaughan received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and his Ph.D. from Brown University. He is currently an associate professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Reading Group Guide
1. Many of Dickenss contemporaries thought the world of eccentrics depicted in
Our Mutual Friend went too far. Do you think this conceit got away from Dickens, or did he have a purpose?
2. Henry James, in his review of Our Mutual Friend in The Nation, says “In all Mr. Dickens's stories, the reader has been called upon . . . to accept a certain number of figures or creatures of pure fancy. . . . He was, moreover, always repaid for his concession by a peculiar beauty or power in these exceptional characters. But he is now expected to make the same concession with a very inadequate reward.” Does Dickens offer little reward?
3. Do you think Dickens originally meant to have Boffin have a change of heart?
4. Some scholars characterize Dickenss work as giving a voice to the masses that, in his society, were never heard. Is this true of his Jewish characters? Consider the character of Riah and the role he plays in Our Mutual Friend. Do you think Dickens was anti-Semitic?
5. Consider Bella Wilfer and John Harmon/John Rokesmiths relationship. Was Dickens making the novel neat when the betrothed couple truly falls in love, or was he creating a plot twist? Is this a comment about marriage?
6. Could it be said that Jenny Wren and the life she leads is the true heart of this novel?
From the Trade Paperback edition.