payment page
Our Mutual Friend is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in serial form between 1864 and 1865. The original publication included nineteen monthly installments in all and was the last one completed by Dickens before his death in 1870. (The author's final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was never finished.)The writing of Our Mutual Friend coincided with multiple tragic events in Dickens' life, including the deaths of his mother and son, as well as the Staplehurst Railway Accident, from which Dickens miraculously escaped uninjured. Like Dickens' previous novels, Our Mutual Friend was critical of Victorian society, in this case focusing on the corruptive power of wealth; it was also notable for its comparatively sympathetic portrayal of Jews. Though Dickens' popularity by that time shielded his work from being outright panned, his last novel sold fewer than 30,000 copies, and reviewers at the time disliked both the characters and the plot. Nevertheless, Our Mutual Friend proved ripe fodder for adaptation: the novel has been the subject of three BBC serials, two films, and two BBC Radio plays.
