Dickens was fifty-two years old when he began publishing Our Mutual Friend in May of 1864. It was the last novel he completed before his death in 1870. (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which was being published in serial form during 1870, remained unfinished when he died in June.) Some think Our Mutual Friend one of Dickens’s greatest novels; others, like Henry James, thought it his worst. Wherever you side, it is hard to deny that Our Mutual Friend is a huge and powerful achievement in the enormous body of Dickens’s work.
This section of “Our Mutual Friend: The Scholarly Pages” provides biographical material about Dickens that contextualizes his life around the time of the novel’s writing and publication.
Biographical Accounts
Following are a few biographical accounts of Dickens during the writing and publication of Our Mutual Friend.
“Our Mutual Friend”
By John Forster
“Dickens’s Apology for Fagin”
By Edgar Johnson
The Staplehurst Disaster
By the Dickens Project
Letters
Letter to Forster
August 30, 1863
Letter to Forster
October 1863
Letter to Marcus Stone
February 23, 1864
Letter to Forster
July 1864