Our Mutual Friend (World's Classics S.)

by Charles Dickens (Author), Michael Cotsell (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $4.79

  Our Mutual Friend was first published in monthly parts in 1864-5 and was Dickens' last completed novel. It is rich in imagery and themes, a monument to Dickens' abiding concern with the structure and potential for change and progress at all levels of society. In its use of language and departure from Victorian realism it prefigures the great modernist writings of T.S.Eliot and Virginia Woolf. This edition includes extensive explanatory notes and significant manuscript variants.

• Used

  Paperback
  1991

  $3.47

  John Harmon is a young man estranged from his family, yet on his way from South Africa to London to receive his inheritance. But, according to his father's will, he can only claim it if he marries Bella Wilfer, a beautiful London girl whom he has never met. Before John arrives to claim his birthright, an unknown body is found drowned in the Thames and identified as him. The money passes instead to family servants Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, who welcome into their home the disappointed bride-to-be. But when their associate Silas Wegg tries to blackmail the Boffins with an alternative will, Bella must decide where her loyalties lie.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1952

  $6.22

  Charles Dickens's last completed novel tells the story of a young man who must marry a stranger in order to win his inheritance. Wanting to learn the lady's nature, John Harmon fakes his own death and takes on a new identity. As the complexities of the deceit are revealed, Dickens gives us his most profoundly cynical, yet brilliantly funny, insight into the corruption of wealth on human nature. 40 illustrations.

• New

  Paperback
  1997

  $8.01

  With an Introduction and Notes by Deborah Wynne, Chester College. 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.