Our Mutual Friend

I find it irresistible: the autumn evening closing in, the crazy little boat afloat on the filthy Thames, the strong young woman plying the oars and a ragged, grizzled man, her father, busying himself with something towed in the water behind them. You are some way into the narrative before it dawns on you that it is a drowned body. – Shirley Hughes * Independent *
Dickens’s last completed novel is a marvel of play-acting and posturing, of taking on roles through delusion, calculation and ambition – Philip Hensher * Guardian *

Charles Dickens was born in 1812 near Portsmouth, where his father worked as a clerk. Living in London in 1824, Dickens was sent by his family to work in a blacking warehouse, and his father was arrested and imprisoned for debt. Fortunes improved and Dickens returned to school, eventually becoming a parliamentary reporter. His first piece of fiction was published by a magazine in December 1832, and by 1836 he had begun his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. He focused his career on writing, completing fourteen highly successful novels including Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and Bleak House, as well as penning journalism, shorter fiction and travel books. He died in 1870.

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