Our Mutual Friend

The last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life". In the opening chapters a body is found in the Thames and identified as John Harmon, a young man recently returned to London to receive his inheritance. Were he alive, his father's will would require him to marry Bella Wilfer, a beautiful, mercenary girl whom he had never met. Instead, the money passes to the working-class Boffins, and the effects spread into various corners of London society.