ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book gives a biography of Charles Dickens's life during roughly the seven years before he wrote Our Mutual Friend, focusing principally upon those incidents and decisions that shaped Dickens's activities as an author 1857–61. It provides an account of Dickens's writing activities during his months of work on Our Mutual Friend, then describing and providing photographic reproductions of some of the most striking elements of the novel's manuscript, held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. The book traces the novel's fate as a commodity designed for sale in the Victorian literary market. It discusses the immediate responses of Victorian reviewers and readers, and then describes the novel's century-long stay in the shadows of Dickens studies before undergoing a critical–and increasingly a popular—renaissance since roughly 1970.
