Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
No. CLXIX.–June, 1864–Vol. XXIX.
Harper’s began serializing Our Mutual Friend in the June 1864 edition of Harper’s. The first installment included the first four chapters of the novel (identical to the British serials), and was accompanied by a deceptively younger portrait of the aging Dickens. Guernsey published the first American review of Our Mutual Friend in his monthly column, “Editor’s Easy Chair.”
It is no more necessary to invite our friends to read Dickens’s new story than to exhort them to eat the fresh strawberries. They will be very sure to do both ; and in both cases they will find the old flavor unimpaired. Dickens begins “Our Mutual Friend” with a buoyancy which shows all the vitality and opulence of his genius — just as Thackeray’s “Denis Duval” reveals the unshaken and riper power of Thackeray. Had the latter only lived we should have renewed the old delightful days of Pendennis and Bleak House, when the two great athletes contended, and every generous reader wished each combatant to win. Only one remains, but the other still speaks to us. In the pages of our next Number will be found both Thackeray’s “Denis Duval” and Dickens’s “Our Mutual Friend;” and rich as all other Magazines may be, we are modestly content with our own.
