SOURCE: Westbrook, Wayne W. “Dicken's Secret Sharer, Conrad's Mutual Friend.” Studies in Short Fiction 29, no. 2 (spring 1992): 205-14.

In the following essay, Westbrook investigates the influence of Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend on Conrad's “The Secret Sharer.”

Joseph Conrad had a lifelong fondness for the works of Charles Dickens. In A Personal Record, Conrad, who claimed to have been a great reader since the age of five, cites Nicholas Nickleby as “My first introduction to English imaginative literature” (71). About Bleak House, he admits to an

intense and unreasoning affection, dating from the days of my childhood, that its very weaknesses are more precious to me than the strength of other men's work. I have read it innumerable times, both in Polish and in English; I have read it only the other day.

(124)

As a consequence of this familiarity and esteem, various effects of Dickens are found throughout Conrad's fiction...