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Our Mutual Friend Discussion Series: Parts XVI-XX
January 22, 2023 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm | Virtual Event
Join Professor Karen Hattaway (San Jacinto College) for a series of discussions about the book that stunned Conrad and Dostoevsky.
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Sept. 25, Oct. 23, Nov. 27, and Jan. 22 at 1:00-3:00 PM (PDT) | Virtual Events
Charles Dickens published Our Mutual Friend in twenty monthly parts from May 1864 to November 1865. It was the fourteenth and final novel in his vast corpus of novels, only to be followed by The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), which remained unfinished at the time of his death.
Murder, Money, Marriage, and Mounds… of dust, of human refuse, of cultural debris, of industrial by-production. These are the grand themes and objects this novel’s world spawns, with such horrible inevitability you will think its Thames river-mud could foster spontaneous generation. For the world of Our Mutual Friend is a dirtied and cynical place. Here, even literacy and education–the “power of knowledge” that give heart and decency to Pip and Biddy in Great Expectations–may become, in the wrong hands, mechanical instruments for self-aggrandizement. And the good may need all the wiles of the bad to manufacture a happy ending.
Reading Schedule
| Sep. 25 | Book the First: The Cup and the Lip – Chapters 1-17, Parts I-V | |
| Oct. 23 | Book the Second: Birds of a Feather – Chapters 1-16, Parts VI-X | |
| Nov. 27 | Book the Third: A Long Lane – Chapters 1-17, Parts XI-XV | |
| Jan. 22 | Book the Fourth: A Turning – Chapters 1-16, Parts XVI-XX |
This series of discussions is presented by the Santa Cruz Pickwick Club / Santa Cruz Dickens Fellowship with support from the Santa Cruz Public Libraries.
More information: https://dickens.
Registration: https://ucsc.