Our Mutual Friend Readalong

[Piggywaspushed]

As discussed on the previous Davis Copperfield Readalong, I hope some of us are eager to start Our Mutual Friend!

This is quite a complex one to break up. As usual, Dickens published in 19 monthly instalments but this one has 4 'Books' .

It is split up as follows:

BOOK THE FIRST: THE CUP AND THE LIP
I – May 1864 (chapters 1–4);
II – June 1864 (chapters 5–7);
III – July 1864 (chapters 8–10);
IV – August 1864 (chapters 11–13);
V – September 1864 (chapters 14–17).
BOOK THE SECOND: BIRDS OF A FEATHER
VI – October 1864 (chapters 1–3);
VII – November 1864 (chapters 4–6);
VIII – December 1864 (chapters 7–10);
IX – January 1865 (chapters 11–13);
X – February 1865 (chapters 14–16).
BOOK THE THIRD: A LONG LANE
XI – March 1865 (chapters 1–4);
XII – April 1865 (chapters 5–7);
XIII – May 1865 (chapters 8–10);
XIV – June 1865 (chapters 11–14);
XV – July 1865 (chapters 15–17).
BOOK THE FOURTH: A TURNING
XVI – August 1865 (chapters 1–4);
XVII – September 1865 (chapters 5–7);
XVIII – October 1865 (chapters 8–11);
XIX-XX – November 1865 [chapters 12–17 (Chapter the Last)].

4 instalments is feasible but might be too much for those of us working/ reading other books/child or DP wrangling/ insert other reason.

Therefore, I would suggest 8 instalments, splitting each book in two somehow?

That would take us to March 2021 and then we can pretend 2020 never existed.

Up for it? Thoughts?

Looking forward to it! All usual suspects and newcomers welcome.

On a personal note, I ahve just finished W and P : not keen to reread just right now....

I’m not that fussed about W&P personally, just remember others suggesting it.

The thing about Dickens is he did publish in instalments so he is great for a readalong. I haven't read Hard Times , The Old Curiosity Shop or Nicholas Nickleby yet.

My other suggestion would be Gaskell? Wives and Daughters is the only one really long enough for a readalong.

Middlemarch aside (which I am not keen to read again) , Eliots, Brontes and Hardys aren't long enough.

War and peace could be a problem, given that you'd all need the same translation-unless there are standard ones?

Speaking as an outsider, someone who doesn't fancy re-reading Dickens again yet, I'd love to know what everyone would make of The Mystery of Edwin Drood:

Upon the death of Dickens on 9 June 1870, the novel was left unfinished, only six of a planned twelve installments having been published. He left no detailed plan for the remaining installments or solution to the novel's mystery, and many later adaptations and continuations by other writers have attempted to complete the story.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mystery_of_Edwin_Drood

Might be fun to try to work out who the murderer is, and it's (obviously) quite short. Again for obvious reasons it's unusual to find it second-hand, but there should be copies online. (The best Dickens edition has Dicken's notes about later numbers).

Oops. Should be "The best Penguin edition", i.e. not their cheap one with text only, no notes on the text.

I'm glad War & Peace has been rejected as I'm currently 42% through the Anthony Briggs translation. My original aim was to read one chapter a day over a year so I could 'tick it off' but I'm finding I can't put it down. (Apart from the Freemason philosophical mumbo jumbo that is!) I have a feeling Tolstoy is going to start increasing the historical and philosophical asides, which I'll no doubt be speed reading through though.

I'd be up for The Old Curiosity Shop, Hard Times (haven't read either) or Nicholas Nickleby (have read a long time ago and thoroughly enjoyed.)
Not sure I could stand the suspense of Edwin Drood if there's no ending (can't believe he didn't sketch out the plot from beginning to end, can you imagine if that piece of paper ever came to light!) and I've started but didn't finish North and South (mainly because I'd just watched the excellent series, with Richard Armitage as the male lead, and it wasn't holding any surprises) so I'm not sure how I'd get on with Wives and Daughters.

There's a cover for the partworks of Edwin Drood where the artist was told to depict events that were to be in the later numbers. Much-debated.

Of the other Dickens, Hard Times is both shorter and more modern feeling, being set Oop North and dealing in part with trade-unions.

I think I'll be running for the hills at the thought of more Dickens. It's been a wonderful opportunity to read along with you all and I've gained so much from it, but I'm defaulting to my previous position that Dickens is not for me. There are too many other authors I haven't tried, or have only read one from that I'd rather explore.

That's interesting about the covers of Edwin Drood being drawn Default, must contain good clues as to where the plot was going.

What would your ideal read along be Fortuna?
I've never read Middlemarch (I know that's not a go-er though) or Vanity Fair.
Given how much I'm enjoying War and Peace I wonder whether any other classic works in translation would work, I've read Les Miserables, but Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love In The Time of Cholera - remain stubbornly unread. I have physical copies of the doorsteps Midnight's Children and Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell and not yet cracked the spines.
Wow so many books so little time!
Although I have promised myself to read all of Dickens so I'm definitely up for another Dickens read along

There's Mayhew's 'London Labour and the London Poor':

"Mayhew interviewed everyone — beggars, street-entertainers (such as Punch and Judy men), market traders, prostitutes, labourers, sweatshop workers, even down to the "mudlarks" who searched the stinking mud on the banks of the River Thames for wood, metal, rope and coal from passing ships, and the "pure-finders" who gathered dog faeces to sell to tanners. He described their clothes, how and where they lived, their entertainments and customs, and made detailed estimates of the numbers and incomes of those practicing each trade. The books make fascinating reading, showing how marginal and precarious many people's lives were, in what, at that time, must have been the richest city in the world.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Labour_and_the_London_Poor

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists:

by the Irish house painter and sign writer Robert Noonan, who wrote the book in his spare time under the pen name Robert Tressell. Published after Tressell's death from tuberculosis in the Liverpool Royal Infirmary in 1911, the novel follows a house painter's efforts to find work in the fictional English town of Mugsborough (based on the coastal town of Hastings) to stave off the workhouse for himself, his wife and his son. The original title page, drawn by Tressell, carried the subtitle: "Being the story of twelve months in Hell, told by one of the damned, and written down by Robert Tressell." Orwell described it as "A book that everyone should read".
Mind you, Tressell didn't get to complete it...
Or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-Trousered_Philanthropists

Des It's hard to suggest something that would make a good readalong as I am woefully ignorant of a lot of classic literature. I tend to read what I find cheap in charity shops rather than having a grand master plan.

I've committed to reading Anna Karenina as part of an IRL bookclub, but we are reading at our own pace rather than to a deadline other than the end of the year. I've got a lot of Hardy knocking around, but comments over on 50 books have put me off of late. The Canterbury Tales have been frowning at me from a shelf for some time. I've also got some Lawrence and some Gaskell (Mary Barton) waiting too. I also want to read some Trollope this year. Definitely not enough time.

Interesting to see you mentioning Midnight's Children and Jonathan Strange as both are on my vague list for this year. I tried MC a few weeks ago, buy my head wasn't with it. My new job is not fun of late and I feel like I have turnip for brains at the moment.

I really wouldn't be offended if everyone skips merrily off into another Dickens without me. 'Doing Dickens' was the point of these threads after all and I never have much to contribute anyway.

I've recently really enjoyed Piranesi, so would be up for a Jonathan Strange read along. But my life circumstances are changing so I'm not too sure if I will have time to do another read-along this year. On that note, I don't know if I will have the headspace to read the February chapters over the next couple of weeks, but I should definitely have finished the whole of OMF by the end of March.

DD left this on my bed, and it probably is the level I should be aiming at ATM

How about Wilkie Collins? I’ve never read any of his. Or Thackeray? I have read Vanity Fair but it’s fab so I would be happy to read it again!

Ooh Vanity Fair is marvellous

(Sorry to butt in, I didn’t know there was a book club on here)

Vanity Fair is definitely on my 'must read' list @TramaDollface.
If you're after a Mumsnet book club try the 50 Book Challenge thread (or the 26 book one - but the 50 book one moves faster and there's no need to read that many books a year) or join us for the next read along.

Just reactivating to remind everyone February is a short month!

I have one chapter to go of the instalments. It all suddenly got dramatic!

Am also at the dramatic point in Adam Bede so today will be a day of gasps and sighs.

Hello!

It's 1st March - white rabbits and all that!

I do wish this book didn't have quite so many plot strands. the Boffin one is the one I am least invested in, not really sure what is going on. I am much more interested in Rokesmith, and in Bradley Headstone.

I am not convinced Eugene is dead. Please no spoilers as in someone going 'oh no Piggy, I think you will find he is alive and kicking by chapter 782!' I don't especially want him to be dead because I want more clarity about what he was up to re Lizzie.

I liked this from Dickens this month:

There are fifty doors by which discovery may enter. With infinite pains and cunning, he double locks and bars forty-nine of them, and cannot see the fiftieth standing wide open.

There is a loooot of water in this book, isn't there? I know Dickens is famed for water but this book is driven by watery outcomes (and in-comes!)

@piggywaspushed after the waste was collected door to door, it was sorted, then the rags were sold on, often to be recycled into fibre and then rewoven into a cheap material called “shoddy” which was a bit like coarse felt apparently, and the bones were also sold on to be boiled down for grease, made into things like cutlery handles and turned into fertiliser. Pretty hard for me to imagine.

Oh wow! Nice...

No doubt lots of sweatshop labour there,too.

Got to love a bit of Victorian exploitation of the underclasses...

It's no wonder Marx came to exist in that period, really!

This was another bitty month wasn’t it, starting to wrap up the various plot strands.

Do you think we will see the Lammles again?

I’m also wondering if Eugene is really dead. I think if he was, it would have been made clearer? On the other hand I’ve missed key events before because Dickens was too euphemistic so who knows.

I liked the chapter in the Wilfer household after Bella’s wedding - very amusing. And Bella’s now pregnant - presumably this will prompt Rokesmith to reveal who he really is and claim his fortune? Wonder what Bella will make of being lied to?

Yes I agree piggy! The older I get, the more sense Marx makes.

Yes euphemisms always get me.

Like when I teach Tess and about 12 chapters later, students always say ' wait, what! Tees had a baby??'

And I really missed the hinting in Adam Bede!!

Aww, Bella telling DH about her pregnancy was genuinely sweet! I do worry though. He is lying to her. Whole LTB MN threads there!!

I got the impression the Lammles were gone for good.

I haven't read Shmoop yet this month!

I am actually proper #TeamBella now.

I finished this month’s chapters a couple of weeks ago, so here are the notes I made at the time:

I was glad to find that the Boffins saw right through the Lammles’ scheming and sent them packing. The way that Mr Boffin spared Georgiana Podsnap’s feelings by not revealing Mrs Lammle as a fraud to her, shows that he has not gone entirely to the bad and there is hope for his redemption.

The chapter featuring the wedding of Bella and Rokesmith was quite baffling in the manner of the early Twemlow chapters - what was going on with the peg-legged pensioner ‘Gruff and Glum’? The chief waiter’s presentation as the ‘Archbishop of Greenwich’ was a parallel to the equally obscure ‘Analytical Chemist’ in the Veneering sections. Bella’s realisation that money doesn’t buy you happiness has been rewarded with twee sentimental domestic bliss. Although if Rokesmith has married her under his pseudonym, are they really legally married??

I found it very satisfying that Lizzie used her boat-rowing skills, gained in recovering bodies from the Thames with her dad, to rescue Eugene from the river. I think her character conveys very well the vulnerability of working class girls to the selfish whims of more privileged men, in a sexual economy in which she could lose all her value by losing her ‘reputation.’

Charley Hexam’s selfishness was excellently conveyed in his confrontation with Bradley Headstone. He didn’t give two hoots for Lizzie or Eugene’s welfare, but was just worried about the impact of Headstone’s actions on his own reputation.