Our Mutual Friend

1865

Dickens's last completed novel, opening with a body pulled from the Thames and a will that leaves a fortune to a young man believed drowned with it. Across four books the money passes through a dust-contractor's foreman, a scheming pair of fortune hunters and a schoolmaster consumed by jealousy. The Postscript, written days after Dickens survived the Staplehurst rail crash, closes the book.