The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend

Our Mutual Friend (1864-5) was Dickens's fourteenth and last completed novel, dark in its conception, panoramic in its observation of English society, and containing some of the novelist's most powerful images, especially the river and dust-heaps. This critical edition documents, for the first time, the author's complete creative process, stretching from his plans for the individual instalments, through the manuscript and proofs, to the lifetime editions, both British and American, over which Dickens was able to exercise some editorial control. It minutely documents the genesis of the novel, its evolution from initial thoughts through proofs and finally to the first edition, and records the author's creative decisions as the text progressed from month to month. This two-volume edition features a thoroughly researched and wide-ranging account of the novel's conception and execution, supported by extensive lists of textual witnesses, variants and emendations. The essay on the text shows that cuts made in the opening numbers especially were forced on Dickens, thus permitting the sensitive restoration in this edition of numerous deleted passages. Thus the complete novel is presented here for the very first time. What emerges is not just more of Dickens's carefully conceived and evocative prose, but a fuller conception of the complete fictional world he had originally envisaged. This edition also offers the reader a glossary and a fuller set of contextual annotations than has been previously published; these materials, together with maps of London in 1864, provide comprehensive support in understanding and appreciating the novel.