This volume presents 918 letters, 435 previously unpublished. Our Mutual Friend, Dickens's main work in this period, comes out monthly from 30 April 1864 to 31 October 1865. The three highly successful All the Year Round Christmas numbers, "Somebody's Luggage", "Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings" and "Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy", take up much of his energies. Public readings continue, though less frequently, and Gad's Hill, where he entertains many of his
friends, plays an increasingly major part in his life. But there is no other period in which he visits France so often, generally alone. The deliberately mystifying language he uses about these visits suggests he was seeing Ellen Ternan there, but there is no evidence to prove it.