Product Description

With an Introduction and Notes by Deborah Wynne, Chester College and illustrated by Marcus Stone, "Our Mutual Friend", Dickens' last complete novel, gives one of his most comprehensive and penetrating accounts of Victorian society. Its vision of a culture stifled by materialistic values emerges not just through its central narratives, but through its apparently incidental characters and scenes. The chief of its several plots centres on John Harmon who returns to England as his father's heir. He is believed drowned under suspicious circumstances - a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity until he can evaluate Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with colourful characters and incidents - the faded aristocrats and parvenus gathered at the Veneering's dinner table, Betty Higden and her terror of the workhouse and the greedy plottings of Silas Wegg.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3415 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 832 pages

From the Author
A guide to one of my best, world-class books
Well, if, like me you've been struggling to come to terms with your rampant imagination and like the idea of dead bodies floating in the River Thames, or chunks of dead bodies preserved in glass bottles, well then, I suppose this little number is just for you. Give it a try. Charles.

About the Author
Michael Slater is Professor of Victorian Literature at Birkbeck College in the University of London. He was editor of The Dickensian (1968-77) and President of the International Dickens Fellowship (1988-90). He has published many books and articles on Dickens.

Customer Reviews

Dazzling!
I was quite simply dazzled by this book and zoomed my way through it in a few days. I wanted more, even after this race through its nearly 900 pages, taken in by the breathtaking scope not only to be found in the diversity and credibilty of even the most eccentric characterisations, such as Wegg or Podsnap, something only to be expected from Dickens, but by the moral flux of so many situations and in the thoughts of the likes of Mrs. Lammle or Bella Wilfer. The cruel satire encarnated in the figure Mrs. Wilfer alone had me laughing out loud and the Society scenes around the Veneering's table are so marvellously observed that they had me wondering how on earth Dickens could have had a friend left in Victorian 'polite society'! Brilliant. The river-shore scenes are amongst the most wonderfully atmospheric I've come across in his work: one wonders again what manner of 'field work' Dickens did to to depict this strangely amphibious half-world and it's population. The tone of the prose, too, was in marked contrast to the only very slightly earlier Great Expectations; greater in breadth of style and scale, with far sharper social criticism and biting humour. In fact, it's the humour, and its very darkness, which I felt most stood out in this tour-de-force. Yes, it's a whopping great book: yes it might take you time to get through, and yes again, the very wealth of its style, the range of personalities, settings, motives and dilemas will inevitably mean that one's attention becomes selective. Yet this only means the challenge is greater and, for this reader anyway, the rewards higher. I really loved it, and would encouarge anyone who's enjoyed a Dickens to have a bash.

Gruesome Masterpiece
Dickens at his darkest best. The later books lean dangerously towards gloom and despair with Dicken's basic philanthropy put to the test. The villain of the piece is modern industrial society which reduces humans to body parts (like machines). In a Hieronymous Bosch-like landscape, black and bleak, Dickens' brilliant characters act out (sometimes comic) roles over which they have seemingly no control and the novel is a cliffhanger whose outcome hangs in the balance. Along with Bleak House and Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend is a must-read of classic English Literature.

A Startling Vision
There are at least half a dozen moments in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, the last book the great master was to complete before his death, when it becomes clear to the reader that he/she has left the London of nineteenth century earth for one deep inside the nightmare landscape of sleep. This is an angry, disturbing book (as all books by old men are), one that presents a vision of a great city coming apart at the seams and stuffed with sinners of all shapes and sizes. At the same time, and this is what makes Dickens both a great artist and a great humanist, there are flashes of beauty and humor that literally bring tears to one's eyes. At a time when so many of our own great cities are on the verge of imploding, there is no one hundred year old novel more pertinent--or saddingly familiar.