Our Mutual Friend

When the body of John Harmon turns up in the Thames, an illiterate dustman named Noddy Boffins unexpectedly inherits Harmon's unclaimed fortune. Boffins's good luck seems fitting since Harmon's father--the notorious London miser Old Man Harmon--became rich through the dustman business, essentially garbage collection. The newly upwardly mobile Boffins and his wife, also a loyal servant of Harmon's miserly father, struggle to fit in with the monied class. At the same time, the couple attempts to aid those less fortunate than themselves, an effort that tests their moral compass. Soon Noddy begins to take on the penny-pinching tendencies of his benefactor. Our Mutual Friend (1865) offers satisfying twists and turns on the Victorian rags-to-riches story as it expertly weaves together one of the author's most important themes, newfound wealth and the seismic shifts of social circumstance that accompany it. This is a free digital copy of a book that has been carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. To make this print edition available as an ebook, we have extracted the text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology and submitted it to a review process to ensure its accuracy and legibility across different screen sizes and devices. Google is proud to partner with libraries to make this book available to readers everywhere.