Registration has concluded. A Newberry Library adult education class. Fall 2025. Tuesdays 2:00-4:00pm (CT) by Zoom, September 16-November 4. Registration information here.
Explore Dickens’s dark final masterpiece of corruption and renewal in weekly parts.
Our Mutual Friend (1864-65) is Charles Dickens’s last completed novel, filled with high and low comedy, vicious satire, intersecting plot lines, and remarkable prose. This class considers the book in serial weekly installments (no spoilers) for an engaging, accessible, and in-depth look at Dickens’s literary craft, social criticism, and psychological insights. Eight sessions. For the first session, please read only chapters 1-4, and please do not read the book’s introduction.
Materials List
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0-140-43497-2
Seminar Description
Juxtaposing scenes of high society and unforgiving poverty, Our Mutual Friend concerns the interwoven lives of those who have profited by material accumulation and those who create the conditions for wealth. Panoramic in its scope and multiply-voiced in its narrative, the novel follows mysteries of inheritance, the hypocrisies of social climbing, the power of art to connect people, the restoration of integrity, and love stories of innocence, experience, and revenge.
Dickens’s last completed novel originally appeared in serial installments from May 1864 to November 1865, a period that saw some of the most historic changes in the Victorian era. Technology was transforming the way people lived, traveled, learned about the world, and entertained themselves. Our Mutual Friend reflects many of these changes, and the serial-reading format of this class allows participants to study and discuss the many dimensions of Victorian Britain and the modern world that are revealed by a close literary reading.
Class discussions will follow the progress of the plot and development of characters, as well as such issues as the turn, among Victorian novelists, toward increasingly sophisticated psychological investigation, Dickens’s own troubled personal life at the time of the book’s composition, the vitality of serial publishing, the popularity of theater and other visual spectacles, and the economic contradictions of the modern metropolis.
This class employs the format of serial reading in order to immerse readers in the literary, cultural, and philosophical dimensions of a novel. I begin with two sessions that consider very brief portions of the novel—one original serial installment each for each session, in fact. Thereafter, each session asks participants to read roughly 100 pages (three of the original installments), starting and stopping according to Dickens’s original arrangement. The purpose of this schedule is not to have learners recreate a Victorian reader’s experience (although that issue does come up in discussions), but to help us focus on the details of the narrative from the very beginning of our experience with the novel. I have long felt that two weeks of close attention to the start of a good novel helps turn good readers into better readers, able to appreciate and trace subtle developments throughout the reading experience.
Sessions will also include spoiler-free excerpts from critical materials and tips on what to look for in subsequent installments. These tips include suggestions for noting particular plot points, character changes, and specific “must-read” sections, among other hints for active reading. Slides and film scenes will serve to highlight some of the historical, artistic, and literary references in the novel, offering a kind of “annotated novel” experience prompted by the artistry of Our Mutual Friend itself. The class will also spotlight the complete sets of the original installments of Our Mutual Friend held in the Newberry Library’s Special Collections.
No AI technology will be used in the development or presentation of lectures and class materials.
Schedule
Session One: Chapters 1.1-1.4
Supplementary Theme: Reading and Serialization
Session Two: Chapters 1.5-1.7
Supplementary Theme: Psychology (and Literary Form)
Session Three: Chapters 1.8-1.17
Supplementary Theme: Money, Profit, and Poverty
Session Four: Chapters 2.1-2.10
Supplementary Theme: Detective Fiction
Session Five: Chapters 2.11-3.4
Supplementary Theme: London Theatricals
Session Six: Chapters 3.5-3.14
Supplementary Theme: Dickens’s Life
Session Seven: Chapters 3.15-4.7
Supplementary Theme: Gendered identities
Session Eight: Chapters 4.8-4.17 (“chapter the last”)
Supplementary Theme: Critical Legacies
Header image: “The Bird of Prey” (detail). Illustration by Marcus Stone for the first monthly installment of Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, May 1864. Source: The Newberry Library, Special Collections, Case Y 155 .D57469.
