SOURCE: “Our Mutual Friend: The Birds of Prey,” in Victorian Newsletter, Vol. 24, Fall, 1963, pp. 6-12.

In the following essay, Lanham claims that the theme of Our Mutual Friend is predation rather than money.

Our Mutual Friend's reputation began in the cellar with Henry James' famous review, and climbed steadily in critical esteem until Edmund Wilson's reappraisal established it at the top of the house. The two opinions make a startling contrast. James had begun his review, “Our Mutual Friend is, to our perception, the poorest of Mr. Dickens's works. And it is poor with the poverty not of momentary embarrassment, but of permanent exhaustion. It is wanting in inspiration.”¹ Dickens was certainly a hard- (if self-) driven man while he was working on the novel, as anyone reviewing the period in Johnson or in the Letters will quickly recall. But the pressures of his readings and of...