‘Mystery of Edwin Drood,’ Dickens’s Unfinished Novel - The New York Times The New York Times Theater |A Dickens Mystery Best Left Unsolved Search Continue reading the main story Photo Stephanie J. Block, center foreground, as the title character in the current revival of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” based on a novel by Charles Dickens. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times CHARLES DICKENS , a lifelong ham, would have loved Rupert Holmes’s “Mystery of Edwin Drood,” now playing in a well-received Roundabout Theater Company revival at Studio 54. The show is set in a Victorian music hall, where the actors, a second-rate touring troupe from London, are putting on their own, very hammy version of Dickens’s last, unfinished novel. Theirs is a world that Dickens knew well. From a young age he was stage-struck and for a while yearned to be an actor, not a writer. Even as he became an immensely successful novelist, he delighted in putting on amateur theatricals, usually starring himself, from his own scripts. And in his later years he became famous for the public readings he gave from his books both in England and in America.

These weren’t stuffy 92nd Street Y sorts of evenings but dramatic one-man shows in which Dickens acted out all the parts with such passion that by the end he would be physically and emotionally spent. The readings may partly explain why “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” was never completed. During the months he was writing it, Dickens broke a longstanding rule about not doing a reading tour while also working on a book. Already in poor health, and taking laudanum both to help him sleep and for pain in his legs, he exhausted himself and died of a stroke in June 1870, worn out at the age of 58. Photo Charles Dickens Credit Associated Press Though it didn’t become known until the early 20th century, Dickens had also been living with a secret, one that overlaps with the mystery in “Drood” — and in this, the bicentennial of his birth, several new books throw additional light on it.

Continue reading the main story Set in the fictional cathedral town of Cloisterham, “Drood” is mainly the story of an opium-addicted choirmaster, John Jasper, secretly in love with Rosa Bud, the fiancée of his nephew, Edwin Drood, who disappears on Christmas Eve, under suspicious circumstances, shortly before the book breaks off. (Only 6 of a planned 12 serial installments were completed.) There is some dark, psychosexual atmosphere and a couple of nice comic moments, but by Dickens’s usual standards the book feels thin and underimagined. Advertisement Continue reading the main story That has not kept if from being an object of fascination. Almost from the moment the book was published it became a literary parlor game to solve its mystery, or three mysteries, really: Is Drood truly dead, and if so, who killed him? And who is the strange character Datchery, who turns up late in the tale, apparently in disguise? There have also been countless attempts to finish the story.

These include a dramatic version by Dickens’s son Charley and an 1873 book by a Vermont printer and con artist named Thomas James, who professed to have channeled Dickens through a medium, allowing him to finish “Drood” with the author’s “spirit-pen.” In a preface James also claimed to have in psychic readiness a brand-new Dickens novel, “The Life and Adventures of Bockley Wickleheap,” which he said “bid fair to equal anything from his pen while on earth.” Photo The cover of Michael Slater’s latest book about Dickens. Credit Patricia Wall/The New York Times Mr. Holmes said recently that while growing up in Rockland County, N.Y., he was fascinated by the unfinishedness of “Drood.” He would pick up the book, look at the last page and imagine Dickens dropping dead right then and there. But he didn’t actually read the novel until sometime in the ’70s, when, now a successful record producer (for Barbra Streisand, among others) and writer of pop hits like “Escape (The Piña Colada Song) ” he began it on a train ride to Chicago.

“I said to myself, ‘You know, this has many of the key ingredients of a musical,’ ” he recalled. “The protagonist is a choirmaster, possessed, we’re told, of a voice angels themselves might envy. He plays the organ. He’s madly in love with his vocal student, Rosa Bud, so there’s every reason for him to sing to her, and her to sing to him.” He wrote a few early songs for a “Drood” musical, Mr. Holmes added, but the piece was unremittingly bleak, and there was the problem of what to do about the ending. He abandoned it and didn’t return to “Drood” until the early ’80s, when Joseph Papp, the head of the Public Theater, and his wife, Gail Merrifield, encouraged him to try again. He solved the bleakness problem by imagining “Drood” as a show within a show performed in a Victorian music hall. And he solved the ending problem by not solving it. Photo Rupert Holmes, creator of the musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” Credit Fred R.

Conrad/The New York Times Halfway through the second act in his version of “Drood,” which moved from the Public’s Delacorte Theater to Broadway in 1985, the audience votes for a villain and on the identity of Datchery, and as often as not it does so not according to logic or the likelihood of guilt but out of affection for one or another member of the cast. The script, like an ingenious piece of clockwork machinery, can accommodate multiple possibilities, many of them highly unlikely. Mr. Holmes doesn’t like to spoil the fun by revealing his own ideas about the mystery, but when pressed, he said he believed, as most scholars do, that John Jasper almost certainly killed Edwin Drood. Jasper is by far the most interesting character in the book. (Drood is by comparison something of a pill, and the reader feels no great loss when he disappears.) Advertisement Continue reading the main story In an important 1940 essay, one that changed the way Dickens was viewed by critics, Edmund Wilson wrote about the strain of dualism that runs all through the novels, counterbalancing good and evil, sometimes within a single character.

No one illustrates this more than Jasper, who is practically a Jekyll-and-Hyde figure: a religious man, a gifted musician, a kindly uncle, but also an opium addict, a vindictive lover and someone driven by sexual obsession. As Mr. Holmes pointed out, Jasper also bears a certain resemblance to his creator, for at the time of writing “Drood,” Dickens, one of the most admired and beloved men in England, seemingly a model of kindness, decency and probity, had been living a double life for years. Photo Betsy Wolfe as Rosa Bud and Will Chase as John Jasper in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times In 1858 Dickens announced in his magazine Household Words that he was separating from Catherine Hogarth, his wife of 22 years. He also leaked to the press an even uglier and nastier letter, in which he cruelly and falsely claimed that Catherine was a neglectful mother unloved by her children. His friends and contemporaries were astonished and upset; some of the more cynical assumed he must be having an affair with Catherine’s younger sister, Georgina, who stayed on with the family as housekeeper.

But not for decades did it begin to emerge that in 1857 Dickens had begun a relationship with an innocent-seeming 18-year-old actress, Ellen Ternan (or Ellen Lawless Ternan, to give her full name, which, as Wilson pointed out, is oddly echoed by the name of one of the important characters in “Drood,” Helena Landless.) They met in a theater, where she was acting in ‘The Frozen Deep,” a melodrama written by Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and soon he was keeping her in a series of lodgings in England and France. The most comprehensive account of the Ternan affair is Michael Slater’s new book, “The Great Charles Dickens Scandal,” which describes how the secret became known and how the public reacted, though Mr. Slater doesn’t go very deeply into the nature of the arrangement itself.

In his masterly, if eccentric, 1990 biography, Peter Ackroyd insisted that Dickens never consummated his relationship with Ternan, and that the arrangement was entirely platonic — this in spite of evidence that Dickens, the father of 10 children with a wife whom he didn’t particularly care for, was as energetic about sex as he was about everything else. Video Excerpt: 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' Stephanie J. Block and company members sing “The Writing on the Wall” from the Broadway revival of Rupert Holmes’s musical. By Roundabout Theater Company on Publish Date November 13, 2012. . Watch in Times Video » embed The latest big biography, by Claire Tomalin (who also wrote an earlier book about Ternan), assumes that the relationship almost certainly was sexual and tracks in great detail when and where Dickens and Ternan were together.

And in “Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens,” out this month, Robert Gottlieb goes one step further and suggests that most likely, as Dickens’s daughter Kate and son Henry believed, there was an 11th child, a son born to Ternan in France, probably in January or February, 1863, and who died a few months later. If Mr. Gottlieb is right, then Dickens at the time of writing “Drood,” still unable to acknowledge Ternan publicly, must have been carrying an incalculable weight of shame and guilt, and it’s reasonable to assume that the relationship had by then taken on a much darker, more regretful character. (Ternan later married a clergyman and claimed that the idea of intimacy with Dickens revolted her.) The novel “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” is a long way from touching on things like a secret pregnancy and a premature infant death, but it’s full of secrets, sorrow, anger and shame. Jasper, an older man in love with a younger woman who is sickened by his touch, hates himself but can’t help himself. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr.

Holmes’s version is an altogether happier affair, which is another reason it would have appealed to Dickens. It’s just playacting, the character of the stage manager reminds us, and we can do it again tomorrow night and have it all come out differently. A version of this article appears in print on November 25, 2012, on Page AR6 of the New York edition with the headline: A Dickens Mystery Best Left Unsolved. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens · OverDrive: eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries Classic Literature Fiction The Mystery of Edwin Drood is Charles Dickens's brilliant contribution to the field of crime and detection. In fact, the novel is even more of a mystery than Dickens himself intended, for he died before completing it, making it a favorite of literary detectives. Against a background of opium dens, nocturnal graveyard visits, and moldering monastic crypts, Dickens weaves a tightly knit plot centered on the ominous disappearance of young Edwin Drood.

Suspected of foul murder are John Jasper, a drug-addicted choir-master who hungers after Drood's fiancée, and Neville Landless, a Ceylonese who had previously quarreled violently with the missing man. With dark, brooding atmosphere and masterful characterization, Dickens is at the height of his powers in this final and unsurpassed work. Produced by Alcazar AudioWorks with original music by Hans Bisner Patricia Cornwell solves The Mystery of Edwin Drood in new show | Books | The Guardian Charles Dickens Patricia Cornwell solves The Mystery of Edwin Drood in new show A student essay, in which the future Kay Scarpetta author set out to name the killer in Charles Dickens’s unfinished novel, has gone on display in London On the case ... Patricia Cornwell outside the Dickens museum Close This article is 1 year old Years before forensic pathologist-sleuth Kay Scarpetta was applying her finely-tuned mind to stopping the serial killers who plague Richmond, Virginia and its environs, her creator Patricia Cornwell was setting her sights on solving a mystery that has frustrated the literary world for more than a century: what happened to Edwin Drood, the protagonist of Charles Dickens’s final, unfinished novel?

Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood centres on the hypocritical choirmaster John Jasper, a man who spends his time in opium dens while lusting after his nephew Edwin Drood’s fiancee Rosa Bud, one of his choristers. Edwin is found to be missing one morning, with only a shirt-pin, and “a gold watch, bearing engraved upon its back ED”, ever found. The mystery of his disappearance has never been solved, as the novel was left incomplete at the time of Dickens’s death on 9 June 1870, with its ending unknown. According to Louisa Price, curator of the Charles Dickens museum in London, more than 200 different endings have been suggested for the story, from novels to plays, films and musicals. Cornwell’s, written for an English class at Davidson College in 1977 and the piece which the bestselling author credits with inspiring her to become a writer, pinpoints Jasper as the villain, taking issue with the assertion by some that Drood does not die, and laying out in meticulously-argued prose just why her theory fits.

Highlighting her belief that “Jasper’s use of opium could have easily rendered him capable of murder”, Cornwell goes on to show in her paper, The Mystery of John Jasper, “that Drood is definitely dead and that Jasper really did kill him”. She points to “Dickens’s symbolic use of time” – when Drood’s watch is retrieved from a weir, it has stopped, while a storm the previous evening has torn the hands off the cathedral tower clock. She also points to the fact that “before Dickens died he took Luke Fildes , his illustrator, into his confidence and told him to draw Jasper with a double-length scarf because he was going to strangle someone with it. And on the night of Drood’s disappearance, we read that Jasper was indeed wearing a long black scarf.” Cornwell ends by stating that Dickens would have had the murderer exposed for his deeds, because Jasper did not realise that Drood had Rosa’s gold engagement ring in his pocket when he killed him and covered his body in quick lime. “Gold is not destroyed by quick lime. In a sense, natural order is restored because it preserves the one shred of evidence that will convict John Jasper,” writes Cornwell.

“Probably [characters] Durdles and Deputy would have discovered the ring … and Jasper, the murderer, would have been brought to justice.” Cornwell has loaned the term paper – for which she received an A – to the Charles Dickens Museum as part of a new special exhibition, A Dickens Whodunit: Solving The Mystery of Edwin Drood . The bestselling novelist said that she first decided she wanted to become a writer when she wrote the paper, and that she was “unbelievably honoured” to have her work shown in the exhibition. Her solution, she added, “still seems plausible enough”. The exhibition also includes a recently discovered letter from Dickens to his lawyer Frederick Ouvry, of the firm of Farrer & Ouvry. Dated 30 October 1869, the letter had been stored in the basement of the law firm, and sees Dickens giving his terms for the publication of The Mystery of Edwin Drood: £7,500 payment in cash, equivalent to more than £550,000 today.

Pinterest Charles Dickens’s letter to Farrer & Ouvry Photograph: Letter from Charles Dickens/Handout “Here follow the heads of a little agreement I want drawn up in due form between myself and Chapman and Hall. I suppose it had best be a separate agreement, apart from that which you now have in hand? But you will know all about that,” Dickens writes to Ouvry, adding, enigmatically: “Secrecy is important, and particularly as to the name of the book.” “The novel itself is a mystery and I’m sure Dickens was aware that people would be trying to get clues and ideas about it from the moment it was published. I’m sure he was writing [to Ouvry] to keep as much as he could under wraps,” said Price. “This is Dickens at a point when he was a very mature author with an amazing following behind him, a very large fanbase, and it had been several years since he had written a novel.” Price added that “the little bit we know” about what Dickens planned “seems to suggest that Jasper is going to be guilty of something”.

As well as Dickens’s remarks to his illustrator, John Forster’s Life of Dickens says the author had planned that “the story … was to be that of the murder of a nephew by his uncle”. But Dickens’s intentions, said Price, will never be fully known. “It’s very frustrating when these mysterious characters turn up, and you know they’re going to be important, but you’ve only got 20 pages to go,” she said. “It’s the ultimate mystery novel – a whodunnit where we will never know whodunnit for sure. And I think that’s part of the huge appeal – it’s almost like he set it up for people like Patricia to take what he’d done, and take it to their own conclusions with their own ideas.” Cracking the Case of Charles Dickens’ Unfinished Novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the Madcap Musical It Inspired | Broadway Buzz | Broadway.com Cracking the Case of Charles Dickens’ Unfinished Novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the Madcap Musical It Inspired Features By Marc Snetiker November 1, 2012 - 2:07PM Betty Buckley & Stephanie J.

Block in 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' About the Show Videos Broadway audiences choose an ending for the musical version of Dickens' unfinished novel 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood.' 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. A century later, Dickens’ fragmentary story inspired a zany 1985 Broadway musical, which is back on Broadway this fall in its first major revival. Before cracking the case, we dug up the Dickensian dirt on this infamously incomplete mystery. Death, Dickens and Drood British 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. But the fate of one famous Dickens character—young Edwin Drood—remains entirely unknown, almost 150 years after the author’s death. Why? Well, he never finished the book.

Dickens 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. The story follows the title character, an ordinary man whose sudden disappearance throws the fictional townspeople of Cloisterham into a panic. Suspicions arise about who may be responsible for Drood’s vanishing, and the cast of potential culprits includes Edwin’s fiancée, Rosa Bud; his jealous uncle, John Jasper; and vengeful twins Neville and Helena Landless. On June 8, 1870, Dickens suffered a stroke in his home while working on the 23rd chapter. He died a day later, thus leaving the ending of The Mystery of Edwin Drood…well, a mystery. Of the 12 installments planned for the story, Dickens had published only three and penned three others. In a curious irregularity, Dickens did not leave behind any notes for the remaining chapters, and so the story’s biggest question—the fate of the disappeared Edwin Drood and the identity of his ostensible murderer—was left unanswered.

The Mystery of the Mystery The unfinished ending of The Mystery of Edwin Drood is as much a part of the Dickensian oeuvre as any of his completed works, and the Mystery's mystery has puzzled literary experts through the ages. The novel’s ambiguous non-conclusion begs three questions: Was Edwin Drood murdered? If so, who did it? And which character goes undercover as Dick Datchery, the shadowy detective who appears on the case six months after Drood’s disappearance? In a biography of the author, John Forster wrote that Dickens had revealed to him that “the story…was to be that of the murder of a nephew by his uncle.” Additional evidence unearthed over the years, including testimony from Drood’s illustrator, Luke Fildes, and Dickens’ son, Charles Jr., supported the idea that Edwin was in fact killed by his uncle, Jasper. This deduction is generally agreed upon, but nevertheless, no theory about Drood, Jasper or Datchery has received the happy honor of being unanimously accepted.

No wonder the story of poor Edwin Drood remained fascinating over the next hundred years to writers of all kinds—not to mention a 20th century composer who first found fame with the pop hit "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)." Pick An Ending, Any Ending! Almost immediately after Dickens’ death, some Droodians chose to tackle the story themselves. Henry Morford published a series continuation that found Edwin Drood alive and revealed two identities of detective Datchery. Morford’s entry, titled John Jasper’s Secret: Sequel to Charles Dickens’ Mystery of Edwin Drood, was even rumored to have been authored by Charles Dickens Jr. Other adaptations, including one by an author who claimed that Dickens’ spirit had actually possessed him, did not receive such high praise. Thus, the enigma of Dickens’ incomplete text has been left to those who interpret the novel in other media. There have been Drood radio programs, television miniseries, big-budget movies and even a mock trial for John Jasper, staged in London in 1914 and featuring George Bernard Shaw as a wisecracking jury foreman. (The verdict?

Everyone was guilty.) Because a successful movie hinges upon having an ending, filmmakers who adapted The Mystery of Edwin Drood for the screen were forced to fill in the blanks. Universal Pictures’ 1935 film adaptation revealed John Jasper (played by Claude Rains, above left) as the killer and Neville Landless as Dick Datchery. A 2012 BBC miniseries also indicted Jasper (played by Matthew Rhys, above right), but elected town clerk Bazzard as Datchery. Despite continuing interest and variations from scholars, filmmakers and writers, arguably the most successful interpretation of the piece came in 1985, when Drood found musical life in a new home: Broadway. A Most Distinguished Musical Pop composer Rupert Holmes’ musical version of Drood was inspired by his interest in British pantomimes and the Victorian-era music hall tradition, including garish costumes, cross-dressing leads and audience participation. Holmes had been urged to try his hand at a musical by Gail Merrifield (the wife of Public Theater head Joseph Papp), who had been impressed by the composer's performance of his own story-songs at a nightclub in 1983.

Because he felt Dickens' story was too dry for a Broadway musical, Holmes conceived the show as a play-within-a-play, with the actors playing dual roles as Drood characters and the fictional English music hall thespians portraying them. “[The musical] has the same relationship to Dickens that Kiss Me, Kate does to The Taming of the Shrew,” Holmes explained to the Chicago Tribune. Also in keeping with music hall tradition, Holmes opted to have the lead character of Drood be played by a cross-dressing woman. Holmes wrote the book, music, lyrics and orchestrations for the show—an impressive feat in itself—but the real draw of Drood was his groundbreaking choice to allow the audience, rather than himself, to finish the story. In the show’s second act, the action abruptly stops where Dickens finished writing, and the audience is left to vote between eight potential detectives, seven possible murder suspects and six would-be lovers to give the story a decidedly happy ending. The Mystery of Edwin Drood debuted in August 1985 at Central Park's Delacorte Theater, an ideal venue for such a rollicking show.

Tony winner Betty Buckley played the title role and actress Alice Nutting in a cast that also included George Rose, Cleo Laine and Howard McGillin. Buoyed by good reviews, a revised version opened at Broadway's Imperial Theatre on December 2, 1985. Eventually renamed Drood, the show ran for 608 performances and received 11 Tony nominations, winning five awards, including Best Musical. Edwin Drood Breathes New Life In the spring of 2012, Roundabout Theatre Company announced that its fall season would include the first Broadway revival of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, with legendary Broadway star Chita Rivera taking on the role of opium den madame Princess Puffer. “This is all new for me,” Rivera told Broadway.com of headlining the show’s first major staging in more than 25 years. “We’re discovering it every single day.” Five-time Tony nominee Scott Ellis, who showed his talent for period musicals with Curtains, signed on to direct. A host of Broadway stars joined Rivera in the cast, including Stephanie J. Block in the title role, Will Chase , Andy Karl , Jessie Mueller , Jim Norton , Gregg Edelman and Betsy Wolfe .

Performances began on October 19, and early buzz among theatergoers made Drood one of the hottest tickets in town—and with almost 400 different variations, performances are rarely the same. “This show hasn’t been done in so long, and there are so many people that don’t know the show at all,” Wolfe, who plays frequent murderer choice Rosa Bud, told Broadway.com. “I think that people are going to be in for a real treat.” A treat so good, in fact, it may be worth dying for! Crack the case of The Mystery of Edwin Drood at Studio 54—and make your own decision about how the story should end! LibriVox Librivox Acoustical liberation of books in the public domain Menu Charles DICKENS (1812 - 1870) The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and readers have often speculated what the ending might have been. The novel is named after Edwin Drood, but it mostly tells the story of his uncle, a Jekyll-and-Hyde-esque choirmaster named John Jasper, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud.

Miss Bud is Drood's fiancée, and has caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless, who comes from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with his twin sister, Helena, and immediately makes an enemy of Drood. It is hinted strongly that Jasper is the murderer, but it is not known whether Dickens had a surprise in mind. (Summary from Wikipedia) Genre(s): Detective Fiction Charles Dickens: The Mystery of Edwin Drood Charles Dickens: The Mystery of Edwin Drood Edwin Drood is Dickens's last novel, and was unfinished when the author died in 1870. Only six of the planned twelve instalments were published, in monthly parts from April to September of that year. The novel was illustrated by Luke Fildes. The manuscript was subsequently bequeathed to the Museum by John Forster (1812-1876) the author's friend and biographer. The Forster Collection also includes the manuscripts of most of Dickens's other full-length novels, plus printers' proofs, early editions, correspondence and artworks.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) The Mystery of Edwin Drood is solved as Charles Dickens' novel gets an ending | Daily Mail Online comments Unfinished: Charles Dickens never wrote an ending to his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood A mystery posed by Charles Dickens has finally been solved after 145 years after readers of his final, unfinished novel voted to give it an ending at last. The Mystery of Edwin Drood was written and published in instalments, and when the author died in 1870 he had not yet completed the ending which would answer the question of who killed the main character. Academics at the University of Buckingham decided to crowd-source the solution to the riddle - and now 15,000 members of the public have come up with their verdict on the mystery. The narrative focuses around Edwin Drood and his fiancée Rosa, who is the object of unwanted attention from Edwin's opium-addict uncle John Jasper. The title character suddenly disappears on a stormy night, leading to the assumption that he is dead - but Dickens never got round to finishing the story and explaining what happened.

Researchers set up a website explaining the plot to members of the public, and inviting them to give their opinions on what happened. The overwhelming verdict was that Jasper killed his own nephew and stashed his body in the church crypt - scotching theories that Edwin is secretly still alive, or that he was murdered by his rival Neville Landless. Lecturer Peter Orford, who ran the Buckingham project known as the Drood Inquiry, had previously suggested that it made most sense to see Jasper as the killer. Speaking after the results were announced, he said: 'For a century and a half the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood has prompted weird and wonderful responses from enthusiasts pushing to get their views heard in articles and books. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share 'The aim of the Drood Inquiry was to reach the wider public who might usually remain quiet on this, to see what the popular idea of Drood's ending might be.

'Thousands of visitors came to the site, proving that interest in the mystery remains high, and it seems that while the large controversy of Drood reigns on, there is a clear majority for the answer proposed by Dickens's friends and family: Edwin Drood is dead, murdered by his Uncle Jasper and hidden in Cloisterham Crypt. Handwritten: The last page of the Edwin Drood manuscript has led to years of speculation about the ending 'It was commonly believed that Jasper himself would die before the end of the novel, along with Neville Landless.' The verdict was revealed at the launch of a new exhibition about the enduring popularity of the novel at the Charles Dickens Museum in London. The Mystery of Edwin Drood was published by Dickens in instalments throughout 1870, until he died in June that year leaving the novel unfinished. A number of previous attempts have been made to provide an ending - with one even claiming to have been written by the great novelist himself from beyond the grave. VICTIM OF A MURDER OR A MAN IN HIDING?

THE TALE OF EDWIN DROOD Portrayal: Freddie Fox played Edwin Drood in the BBC drama broadcast in 2012 There are several theories about what happened to Edwin Drood, and disagreement whether the character was intended to die or merely went into hiding. In the 19th century the prevailing view was that Drood was in hiding after an attempt on his life, made by his uncle John Jasper. Others believe the young student was murdered by Jasper because his uncle had confessed to him about his opium habit. Jasper was also believed to be in love with Drood's fiance Rosa Bud. One theory is that Neville Landless may have murdered Drood because he was a rival for the affections of Rosa Bud. He then is believed to return in disguise as Detective Dick Datchery. The sudden death of Charles Dickens in 1870 led to an almost immediate reaction by American theorists who started coming up with possible endings to the story. Henry Morford, a New York journalist, wrote an ending to the book after travelling to Rochester. In his version Drood survived an attempt on his life by John Jasper. Detective Dick Datchery then appears as Mr Bazzard, a clerk and playwright, in disguise.

In the 1800s there were rumours that the book itself had been written by Dickens. In 1873 Thomas James, a printer from Vermont, published a version which he claimed had been 'ghost-written' by him channelling Dickens's spirit. During a Broadway adaptation of the book in the 1980s, the audience were given the chance to choose their own ending from an array of seven suspects. In the 1990s, one bizarre theory held that each character represented an Ancient Greek God and all were related. In 2012 BBC2 attempted its own ending of the tale with a two-part series. The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® Overview No Description Available Charles John Huffam Dickens pen-name "Boz", was the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous social campaigner. Considered one of the English language's greatest writers, he was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters, and achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime. Later critics, beginning with George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton, championed his mastery of prose, his endless invention of memorable characters and his powerful social sensibilities.

Yet he has also received criticism from writers such as George Henry Lewes, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, who list sentimentality, implausible occurrence and grotesque characters as faults in his oeuvre. The popularity of Dickens' novels and short stories has meant that none have ever gone out of print. Dickens wrote serialised novels, which was the usual format for fiction at the time, and each new part of his stories would be eagerly anticipated by the reading public. Source: Wikipedia Chapter One The Dawn An ancient English Cathedral Town? How can the ancient English Cathedral town be here! The well-known massive grey square tower of its old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What IS the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe, it is set up by the Sultan’s orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers, one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten thousand dancing- girls strew flowers.

Then, follow white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous colors, and infinite in number and attendants. Still, the Cathedral Tower rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so low a thing as the rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has tumbled all awry? Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted to the consideration of this possibility. Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged window- curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies, dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed given way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle it.

And as she blows, and shading it with her lean hand, concentrates its red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show him what he sees of her. “Another?” says this woman, in a querulous, rattling whisper. “Have another?” He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead. “Ye’ve smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight,” the woman goes on, as she chronically complains. “Poor me, poor me, my head is so bad! Them two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the business is slack, is slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and fewer Lascars, and no ships coming in, these say! Here’s another ready for ye, dreary. Ye’ll remember like a good soul, won’t ye, that the market price is dreffle high just now? More than three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful! And ye’ll remember that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t’other side the court; but he can’t do it as well as me) has the true secret of mixing it?

Ye’ll pay up according, dreary, won’t ye?” She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at it, inhales much of its contents. “O me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad! It’s nearly ready for ye, dreary. Ah poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to drop off! I see ye coming-to, and I ses to my poor self, ‘I’ll have another ready for him, and he’ll bear in mind the market price of opium, and pay according.’ O my poor head! I makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles, ye see, dreary—this is one—and I fits in a mouthpiece, this way, and I takes my mixter out of this thimble with this little horn spoon; and so I fills, deary. Ah, my poor nerves! I got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen year afore I took to this; but this don’t hurt me, not to speak of. And it takes away the hunger as well as wittles, deary.” She hands him the nearly-emptied pipe, and sinks back, turning over on her face.

He rises unsteadily from the bed, lays the pipe upon the hearthstone, draws back the ragged curtain, and looks with repugnance at his three companions. He notices that the woman has opium-smoked herself into a strange likeness of the Chinaman. His form of cheek, eye, and temple, and his color, are repeated in her. Said Chinaman convulsively wrestles with one of his many Gods, or Devils, perhaps, and snarls horribly. The Lascar laughs and dribbles at the mouth. The hostess is still. “What visions can she have?” the waking man muses, as he turns her face towards him, and stands looking down at it. “Visions of many butchers’ shops, and public-houses, and much credit? Of an increase of hideous customers, and this horrible bedstead set upright again, and this horrible court swept clean? What can she rise to, under any quantity of opium, higher than that!—Eh?” He bends down his ear, to listen to her mutterings.

“Unintelligible!” As he watches the spasmodic shoots and darts that break out of her face and limbs, like fitful lightning out of a dark sky, some contagion in them seizes upon him: insomuch that he has to withdraw himself to a lean arm-chair by the hearth—placed there, perhaps, for such emergencies—and to sit in it, holding tight, until he has got the better of this unclean spirit of imitation. Then he comes back, pounces on the Chinaman, and, seizing him with both hands by the throat, turns him violently on the bed. The Chinaman clutches the aggressive hands, resists, gasps, and protests. “What do you say?” A watchful pause. “Unintelligible!” Slowly loosening his grasp as he listens to the incoherent jargon with an attentive frown, he turns to the Lascar and fairly drags him forth upon the floor. As he falls, the Lascar starts into a half- risen attitude, glares with his eyes, lashes about him fiercely with his arms, and draws a phantom knife.

It then becomes apparent that the woman has taken possession of his knife, for safety’s sake; for, she too starting up, and restraining and expostulating with him, the knife is visible in her dress, not in his, when they drowsily drop back, side by side. There has been chattering and clattering enough between them, but to no purpose. When any distinct word has been flung into the air, it has had no sense or sequence. Wherefore “unintelligible!” is again the comment of the watcher, made with some reassured nodding of his head, and a gloomy smile. He then lays certain silver money on the table, finds his hat, gropes his way down the broken stairs, gives a good morning to some rat-ridden doorkeeper, in bed in a black hutch beneath the stairs, and passes out. That same afternoon, the massive grey square tower of an old Cathedral rises before the sight of a jaded traveller. The bells are going for daily vesper service, and he must needs attend it, one would say, from his haste to reach the open cathedral door.

The choir are getting on their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service. Then, the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary from the chancel, and all of the procession having scuttled into their places, hide their faces; and then the intoned words, “When the Wicked Man—” rise among groins of arches and beams of roof, awakening muttered thunder. Chapter Two A Dean, and a Chapter Also Whosoever has observed that sedate and clerical bird, the rook, may perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way homeward towards nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the fancy that it is of some occult importance to the body politic, that this artful couple should pretend to have renounced connection with it.

Similarly, service being over in the old cathedral with the square tower, and the choir scuffling out again, and divers venerable persons of rook-like aspect dispersing, two of these latter retrace their steps, and walk together in the echoing Close. Not only is the day waning, but the year. The low sun is fiery and yet cold behind the monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red leaves down on the pavement. There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes among the little pools on the cracked uneven flagstones, and through the giant elm trees as they shed a gust of tears. Their fallen leaves lie strewn thickly about. Some of these leaves, in a timid rush, seek sanctuary within the low arched cathedral door; but two men coming out, resist them, and cast them forth again with their feet; this done, one of the two locks the door with a goodly key, and the other flits away with a folio music book. “Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?” “Yes, Mr. Dean.” “He has stayed late.” “Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him, your Reverence.

He has been took a little poorly.” “Say ‘taken,’ Tope—to the Dean,” the younger rook interposes in a low tone with this touch of correction, as who should say: “You may offer bad grammar to the laity, or the humbler clergy not to the Dean.” Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that any suggestion has been tendered to him. “And when and how has Mr. Jasper been taken—for, as Mr. Crisparkle has remarked, it is better to say taken—taken—” repeats the Dean; “when and how has Mr. Jasper been Taken—” “Taken, sir,” Tope deferentially murmurs. “—Poorly, Tope?” “Why, sir, Mr. Jasper was that breathed—” “I wouldn’t say ‘That breathed,’ Tope,” Mr. Crisparkle interposes, with the same touch as before. “Not English—to the Dean.” “Breathed to that extent,” the Dean (not unflattered by this indirect homage), condescendingly remarks, “would be preferable.” “Mr.

Jasper’s breathing was so remarkably short;” thus discreetly does Mr. Tope work his way round the sunken rock, “when he came in, that it distressed him mightily to get his notes out: which was perhaps the cause of his having a kind of fit on him after a little. His memory grew Dazed.” Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, shoots this word out, as defying him to improve upon it: “and a dimness and giddiness crept over him as strange as ever I saw: though he didn’t seem to mind it particularly, himself. However, a little time and a little water brought him out of his Daze.” Mr. Tope repeats the word and its emphasis, with the air of saying: “As I have made a success, I’ll make it again.” “And Mr. Jasper has gone home quite himself, has he?” asks the Dean. “Your Reverence, he has gone home quite himself.

And I’m glad to see he’s having his fire kindled up, for it’s chilly after the wet, and the Cathedral had both a damp feel and a damp touch this afternoon, and he was very shivery.” They all three look towards an old stone gatehouse crossing the Close, with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it. Through its latticed window, a fire shines out upon the fast-darkening scene, involving in shadow the pendent masses of ivy and creeper covering the building’s front. As the deep Cathedral-bell strikes the hour, a ripple of wind goes through these at their distance, like a ripple of the solemn sound that hums through tomb and tower, broken niche and defaced statue, in the pile close at hand. “Is Mr. Jasper’s nephew with him?” the Dean asks. “No, sir,” replies the Verger, “but expected. There’s his own solitary shadow betwixt his two windows—the one looking this way, and the one looking down into the High Street—drawing his own curtains now.” “Well, well,” says the Dean, with a sprightly air of breaking up the little conference, “I hope Mr.

Jasper’s heart may not be too much set upon his nephew. Our affections, however laudable, in this transitory world, should never master us; we should guide them, guide them. I find I am not disagreeably reminded of my dinner, by hearing my dinner-bell. Perhaps Mr. Crisparkle you will, before going home, look in on Jasper?” “Certainly, Mr. Dean. And tell him that you had the kindness to desire to know how he was?” “Ay; do so, do so. Certainly. Wished to know how he was. By all means. Wished to know how he was.” With a pleasant air of patronage, the Dean as nearly cocks his quaint hat as a Dean in good spirits may, and directs his comely gaiters towards the ruddy dining-room of the snug old red-brick house where he is at present “in residence” with Mrs. Dean and Miss Dean. Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, fair and rosy, and perpetually pitching himself head-foremost into all the deep running water in the surrounding country; Mr.

Crisparkle, Minor Canon, early riser, musical, classical, cheerful, kind, good-natured, social, contented, and boy-like; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon and good man, lately “Coach” upon the chief Pagan high roads, but since promoted by a patron (grateful for a well-taught son) to his present Christian beat; betakes himself to the gate house, on his way home to his early tea. “Sorry to hear from Tope that you have not been well, Jasper.” “Oh, it was nothing, nothing!” “You look a little worn.” “Do I? Oh, I don’t think so. What is better, I don’t feel so. Tope has made too much of it I suspect. It’s his trade to make the most of everything appertaining to the Cathedral, you know.” “I may tell the Dean—I call expressly from the Dean—that you are all right again?” The reply, with a slight smile, is: “Certainly; with my respects and thanks to the Dean.” “I’m glad to hear that you expect young Drood.” “I expect the dear fellow every moment.” “Ah!

He will do you more good than a doctor, Jasper.” “More good than a dozen doctors. For I love him dearly, and I don’t love doctors, or doctors’ stuff.”

Question: """The Mystery of Edwin Drood"" is the unfinished novel by which author?"
Answer: Charles Dickens