In Our Mutual Friend, his last completed novel, Dickens turned again to question the life and soul of a society corrupted by money. At the Boffin mansion, built on the fortune amassed from old Mr Harmon's dust heaps, and at the Veneerings' superior dinner-table Dickens creates glorious comic satire. Beyond this, flowing through the City and the novel, the river Thames gives and promises death and renewal, dominating the landscape and the love stories of Bella Wilfer and Lizzie Hexam. As Adrian Poole writes in his introduction to this new edition, `In its vast scope and perilous ambitions it has much in common with Bleak House and Little Dorrit, but its manner is more stealthy, on edge, enigmatic.'
