Our Mutual Friend
In his 1940 article "Dickens: Two Scrooges", Edmund Wilson states, ""Our Mutual Friend," like all these later books of Dickens, is more interesting to us today than it was to Dickens's public. Certainly the subtleties and profundities that are now discovered in it were not noticed by the reviewers." As a whole, modern critics of "Our Mutual Friend", particularly those of the last half century, have been more appreciative of Dickens's last completed work than his contemporary reviewers. Although some modern critics find Dickens's characterisation in "Our Mutual Friend" problematic, most tend to positively acknowledge the novel's complexity and appreciate its multiple plot lines.