In which Dickens novel does the character Jenny Wren appear?

Jenny Wren appears in Charles Dickens's novel Our Mutual Friend.

Jenny Wren is the nickname of Fanny Cleaver, a young dolls' dressmaker who lives with Lizzie Hexam after Lizzie's father dies. She has a disabled back and limited leg mobility, but Dickens gives her a vivid, perceptive personality rather than making her merely a tragic figure.

Jenny calls her alcoholic father her “bad child,” reversing the usual parent-child relationship as she cares for him. She later helps nurse Eugene Wrayburn while he recovers from Bradley Headstone's attack. Her imagination remains a source of hope: she frequently dreams of flowers, birdsong and children dressed in white.

A common mix-up is to associate Jenny Wren with a traditional nursery-rhyme character or with Paul McCartney's later song of the same name. In Dickens's fiction, however, she belongs specifically to Our Mutual Friend, which was serialised in 1864–65 and published in book form in 1865.