Our Mutual Friend (1864-5) Dickens’ last completed novel, has been critically praised as a profound and troubled masterpiece, and yet is has received far less scholarly attention than his other major works. This volume is the first book-length study of the novel. It explores every aspect of Dickens’ sustained imaginative involvement with his age. In particular its original research into hitherto neglected sources reveals not only Dickens’ reactions to the important developments during the 1860s in education, finance and the administration of poverty, but also his interest in phenomena as diverse as waste collection and the Shakespeare tercentenary. The Companion to Our Mutual Friend demonstrates the varied resources of artistry that inform the novel, and it provides the reader with a fundamental source of information about one of Dickens’ most complex works.

One night, a crankypants riverman and his daughter find a body in a river outside London. Dum dum dum. The body is that of John Harmon, a young man who was supposed to return to England to claim a huge inheritance from his father. But now that the young man's been murdered, the money will go to a pair of old, naïve servants named Mr. and Mrs. Boffin. Right on cue, whole bunch of shifty folks come out of the woodwork to see what they can get out of the Boffins.One of the points of Old Man's Harmon's will was for his son, John, to marry a young woman named Bella Wilfer. Well it looks like Bella Wilfer won't get the money she expected because her would-be husband is dead. But the Boffins still want to take her in and treat her like their adopted daughter. Meanwhile, two guys named Bradley Headstone and Eugene Wrayburn compete for the love of Lizzie Hexam, the same girl who found John Harmon's body in the river at the beginning of the book. As the plot unfolds, Bradley's hatred of Eugene gets deeper and deeper until he attempts to murder the dude. But the murder is unsuccessful and it only brings Eugene and Lizzie closer together as Lizzie nurses Eugene back to health.About halfway through the book, we learn that John Harmon isn't dead after all. Instead, he's posing as Mr. Boffin's secretary, Mr. Rokesmith, so he can judge whether Bella Wilfer would make a worthy wife or if she's interested only in money. Eventually, Bella proves herself by sacrificing her position with the Boffins in order to defend Mr. Rokesmith. Harmon thinks this is proof enough of her value, so he marries her and eventually gets around to reclaiming his former identity (and the fortune that goes with it).By the end of the book, all the bad guys are punished (yay!) and the good guys are .........

Reprint of the original, first published in 1865.

The subject of Frederick Busch's extraordinary fiction, The Mutual Friend, is Charles Dickens. First published in 1978, Busch's portrait of the Chief (or the Inimitable, as Dickens calls himself) was immediately hailed as a lively, accurate, and brilliantly imagined novel of the great Victorian and his age. Busch's guide to Dickens' world is George Dolby, the Chief's factotum in his last years. The reminiscence begins with the Great American Tour of 1867-68, Dickens is ill and crotchety but ever eager to dazzle the New World with his dramatic readings. Through Dolby we come to a circle of characters around Dickens, among them his long-suffering wife Kate and the actress Ellen Ternan, mistress to the Inimitable. Of Busch's compelling mastery over his larger-than-life subject, the English critic Angus Wilson writes, "Mr. Busch gives us Dickens in all his genius and makes us understand how that genius worked."