It has become a commonplace to describe the nineteenth century as an age of reform, but even the most cursory glance at the key legislation passed during Dickens's lifetime – repeal of the Combination Acts (1824), the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829), the abolition of slavery in all British colonies (1833), the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), the Mines Act (1842), the repeal of the Corn Laws (1846), the Public Health Act (1848) and a succession of factory acts (1833, 1844, 1847, 1850, 1867) – suffices to explain the sobriquet. Indeed, Dickens was working as a parliamentary reporter throughout the Reform Bill crisis (1832), and the second Reform Act (1866) postdates the completion of Our Mutual Friend by a few months.

The 1832 Reform Act ended the aristocratic monopoly of Parliament by extending the franchise to the middle classes in general and ‘their’ industrial cities in particular. Although middle-class reformers had needed the support of the working classes to secure the Reform Act, once within Parliament they reneged on their promise to extend the franchise to their erstwhile allies, while the prompt passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834) only strengthened working-class anger at this betrayal. Thus the limitations of the 1832 Reform Act identified the political integration of the working classes as the outstanding historical problem of the age.