Our Mutual Friend

"Penguin Classics" give you the best possible editions of Charles Dickens' novels, including all the original illustrations, useful and informative introductions, the definitive, accurate text as it was meant to be published, a chronology of Dickens' life and notes that fill in the background to the book. "Our Mutual Friend" centres on an inheritance - Old Harmon's profitable dust heaps - and its legatees, young John Harmon, presumed drowned when a body is pulled out of the River Thames, and kindly dustman Mr Boffin, to whom the fortune defaults. With brilliant satire, Dickens portrays a dark, macabre London, inhabited by such disparate characters as Gaffer Hexam, scavenging the river for corpses; enchanting, mercenary Bella Wilfer; the social climbing Veneerings; and, the unscrupulous street-trader Silas Wegg. The novel is richly symbolic in its vision of death and renewal in a city dominated by the fetid Thames, and the corrupting power of money.

ISBN 0140434976   Volumes 1 ISBN13 9780140434972 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 629 Publisher Penguin Books Ltd   Published in London Imprint Penguin Classics   Series editor Ingham, Patricia Format Paperback   Series title Penguin Classics S. Publication date 26 Jun 1997   Height (mm) 198 Writer of introduction Adrian Poole   Width (mm) 129 Library of Congress PR4568.A2   Spine width (mm) 39 DEWEY 823.8   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC21   Alternative ISBN 9789626348574 Pages 928

'The great poet of the city. He was created by London' --Peter AckroydAdrian Poole writes in his introduction to this new edition, 'In its vast scope and perilous ambitions it has much in common with Bleak House and Little Dorrit, but its manner is more stealthy, on edge, enigmatic'.

This book led me into appreciation of Dickens, after negative school experiences with his books as a teenager. Lizzie Hexam is my favorite character in literature. - Antonette Zeiss



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