The story follows the title character, an ordinary man whose sudden disappearance throws the fictional townspeople of Cloisterham into a panic. Why? Well, he never finished the book.ĭickens began writing what would become his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, in 1870, with the plan of releasing a new installment every month for a year. But the fate of one famous Dickens character-young Edwin Drood-remains entirely unknown, almost 150 years after the author’s death. Before cracking the case, we dug up the Dickensian dirt on this infamously incomplete mystery.īritish author Charles Dickens created a host of famous literary characters who meet their demise by the turn of the last page: Miss Havisham went up in flames Sydney Carton lost his head even Jacob Marley was already dead on page one. A century later, Dickens’ fragmentary story inspired a zany 1985 Broadway musical, which is back on Broadway this fall in its first major revival. In his introduction Angus Wilson discusses what is known about Dicken’s intentions and suggests that, as well as a crime novel, Edwin Drood is a work in which Dickens develops his lifelong preoccupation with the forces of good and evil.Even the greatest sleuths can’t get to the bottom of Charles Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a novel that was left unfinished when the author died suddenly halfway through writing it. But as intriguing as this central plot are the startling innovations in Dicken’s work and the troubled elements lurking within the novel: a dark opium underworld, the uneasy and violent fantasies of its inhabitants, the disquieting presence of old ‘Princess Puffer’, his portrait of the quiet cathedral town of Cloisterham from which people have to escape in order to save themselves – and, at the centre, the menacing figure of Jasper. The main issue in the novel is the disappearance of Edwin Drood and the suspicion that he has been murdered.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is even more of a mystery the Dickens himself intended, for he dies before completing it. Religion - Study, history & religious textsĪntiquity, Specialist & Rare Books (Other Quality)Ĭondition: GOOD (Inscription on inside cover)Įdited by Arthur J Cox with an introduction by Angus Wilson.
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