How Dickens wrote Our Mutual Friend, or Amos Deadstone

So the other day, I was reading scholarly articles about Our Mutual Friend. (Yes, I read academic scholarship for fun). And I found this fascinating article from 1944 about how Dickens planned OMF--with copies of Dicken's original notes!!

So here, in all their typographically-reproduced glory, are Dickens' own notes about how the story of Our Mutual Friend should go. He's also experimented with some lines and some names in the margins. A few interesting observations:

Miss Peecher was almost named Miss Pitcher, Mr. Riah was almost Mr. Oden, and Bradley Headstone was almost Amos Deadstone. (Amos? Really Dickens? I'm glad you switched to Bradley).

When comparing the notes to the original OMF manuscript, the scholar who wrote the article found that each book was written in the same ink as the notes for the next book. So Dickens was planning as he went--he didn't plan the whole book from the beginning.

The most interesting speculation the scholar makes is that Eugene Wrayburn might have originally been supposed to die! By Eugene's scene with Lizzie, Dickens has "Eugene dying" underlined, and a line written by Eugene: "I hope I should amend, if I recovered, but I'm afraid I shouldn't." As much as I hate to say it, I'm glad Eugene doesn't die. It seems like Bradley was fated to die from the beginning, so it would be really sad for Lizzie if she was left without both of them at the end of the story. Plus, Bradley's death would be totally in vain. So...darn.

Anyway, here is the article. If you want to skip to the notes themselves, go to page 8.