New York Times

Saturday, November 22, 1865

By most readers–fresh from the influences exercised over them by the spell of the author’s genius–the last work by Dickens will be considered his best. We fancy, however, that a more matured judgement would place Our Mutual Friend much lower in the long list of Dickens’ books, if they were ranked according to merit. It would stand undoubtedly many degrees above (perhaps his worst work) Little Dorrit, but also an equal number below David Copperfield, and the older stories to which he owes his fame. The partiality for an involved plot, combined with an entire absence of the skill to manage and unfold it, though characteristic of Dickens generally, was perhaps never so conspicuous as in his latest work. The crowd of unnecessary persons brought in, and described with singular elaborateness and detail and then dismissed or forgotten, was never so much in the reader’s way before, and yet, curiously enough, the author speaks in he Preface of the pains employed in devising the story, and the ingenuity shown conducting it. Of course, in every book that Dickens writes, there must be many characters and scenes that could originate with no on else–much rich and fanciful appropriate detail founded on the close observation of nature that no one else could give us, and a hearty sympathy with the right, and hatred and cruelty of oppression. These will all be found in Our Mutual Friend. the portrait gallery that we owe to Dickens is enlarged by the never-to-be-forgotten pair, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, although the simplicity that distinguishes them is strangely at variance by the author’s device, by which they assume fictitious characters and language in a plot, even though its object is a good one. There is no occasion to discuss at length a book now in every one’s hands. Were it a total failure, its sale would scarcely be diminished, for it takes a long time for an author like Dickens to write himself down, and of this we happily see no signs.