ABSTRACT
Dickens made a list of 'General Titles' in his Book of Memoranda which includes: 'The Grindstone', 'Rokesmith's Forge', 'The Cinder Heap', 'Broken Crockery', 'Dust', 'The Young Person', 'Co' and 'Our Mutual Friend' (6). A slip inserted at the opening page of the first monthly part of the novel reads: •• • • The Reader will understand the use of the popular phrase OuR MUTUAL FRIEND, as the title of this book, on arriving at the Ninth Chapter (page 84).' There Boffin tells the Wilfers three times that Rokesmith is 'Our Mutual Friend'. Generally, Dickens used the phrase as a somewhat pompous cliche; for instance, in The Chimes, the 'Poor Man's Friend' Sir Joseph Bowley says: 'My lady, the Alderman is so obliging as to remind me that he has had "the distinguished honour" - he is very good - of meeting me at the house of our mutual friend Deedles, the banker' (2). The lack of mutuality in modern society was one of Carlyle's themes: in Past and Present ( 1 843) he had complained that 'Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather cloaked under due laws-of-war, named "fair competition" and so forth, it is a mutual hostility' (3 .2). Prior to publication, the novel was advertised at the end of an AYR article which described the exorbitant interest rates of a Mutual, General, Universal, Benevolent, and Prudent Life and Loan Insurance Society ( 1 3 . 1 68) .
