Product details
Biographical note
Charles Dickens was born in Hampshire on February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office, who was well paid but often ended up in financial troubles. When Dickens was twelve years old he was send to work in a shoe polish factory because his family had been taken to the debtors' prison. His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays began to appear in periodicals. The Pickwick Papers, his first commercial success, was published in 1836. The serialisation of Oliver Twist began in 1837. Many other novels followed and The Old Curiosity Shop brought Dickens international fame and he became a celebrity in America as well as Britain. Charles Dickens died on 9 June 1870. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. NICK HORNBY is the bestselling author of eight novels, including Just Like You, High Fidelity and About a Boy, and several works of nonfiction including Fever Pitch. He has also written numerous award-winning screenplays for film and television including Brooklyn, Wild and, most recently, State of the Union.<i>Our Mutual Friend</i> made me want to be a writer
- Zoe Heller, Guardian
Dickens wasn't just telling a story, but drawing a panoramic picture of his times, full of detail about the way the Victorians lived, loved and thought. <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> is superbly constructed - part social satire, part murder mystery, part love story. It is crowded with memorable characters: the aspirational Veneerings, the playboy lawyer Eugene Wrayburn, and the heroines: giddy-minded Bella Wilfur and saintly Lizzy Hexam
Independent
<i>Our Mutual Friend</i> disturbs us to the root of our being...terribly great
- John Sutherland,
Perhaps his greatest work. The great novel of London: dark, wise, unsentimental
- William Boyd, Newsweek
Charles Dickens is the greatest novelist in the English language
- Peter Ackroyd,
This combines social satire, a gripping murder mystery and a portrait of Victorian London that still rings deep and true
- Amanda Craig, Sunday Express
Nowhere is the author's overriding concern with the darker aspects of Victorian society and values better expressed than in his last completed novel
Daily Mail
'Perhaps his greatest work. The great novel of London: dark, wise, unsentimental' William Boyd
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NICK HORNBY
John Harmon returns to England after years in exile to claim his inheritance: a great fortune and a beautiful young woman to whom he is betrothed, but has never met. When Harmon's body is pulled out of the Thames, all of London is fascinated by the mystery of the murdered man and his unclaimed riches. Scavengers, social-climbers, lawyers and teachers, a money-lender and a dolls-dressmaker, men and women both honest and villainous, will all become embroiled in this tale of love and obsession, death and rebirth.
**One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NICK HORNBY
John Harmon returns to England after years in exile to claim his inheritance: a great fortune and a beautiful young woman to whom he is betrothed, but has never met.