A dead man’s fortune, a body pulled from the Thames and a young man who disappears from his own story. Charles Dickens opens his last complete novel with a river, a rope and a riddle. When the old dust contractor John Harmon dies, his will leaves everything to his son on one condition: that he marry a girl he has never met, Bella Wilfer. What follows is a vast, swirling Victorian panorama of money, class and the dust heaps of London, peopled by misers, social climbers, schemers, kindly Mr Boffin, the “Golden Dustman”, the scheming Silas Wegg and some of the most vivid characters Dickens ever created. Ten voices share this immense recording of more than thirty-three hours, a banquet for those who love long novels, from the river’s edge to the drawing rooms of the newly rich.
Introduction
Our Mutual Friend, published serially in 1864 and 1865, was Dickens’ last complete novel. Charles Dickens lived from 1812 to 1870, and he wrote it at the height of his powers, with a bitter and satirical eye on the pursuit of money in Victorian society. The story begins with a fortune left to John Harmon by his father, a rich dust contractor. To inherit it, John must marry a young woman he has never met, Bella Wilfer. He is returning to England after an exile imposed by his father when a ship’s mate, in whom he has confided, tries to murder him.
From this dramatic opening, the novel branches into a web of interwoven plots. The river Thames, the heaps of rubbish that make up the dust contractor’s wealth, and the drawing rooms of the newly rich provide settings that echo one another, and the central theme is the corrupting power of money. Dickens fills the book with eccentric figures and sharp social observation, and he makes room for tenderness too.
The recording is made up of 68 sections and lasts about thirty-three and a half hours. It is shared among ten LibriVox volunteers, which helps the many voices of the novel stand apart.
This is a long book, and the best way to enjoy it is slowly: a chapter or two at a time over weeks, perhaps, in the manner of its original readers who followed it in monthly instalments. Those who stay with it will find one of Dickens’ most mature and unsettling works, whose concerns about wealth and appearances feel strikingly modern.
Public domain
Charles Dickens died in 1870: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
