#Edmund drood archive
#Edmund drood full

Though jealous of Dickens, Collins is concerned about Dickens’ mental health after a deadly railway accident at Staplehurst in 1865. The entire tale - all 772 pages of it - is told by Wilkie Collins, a sometime collaborator and friend of Dickens’ who produced the sensational detective novel “The Moonstone” (think of him as Brad Meltzer to Dickens’ Dan Brown). Simmons’ “Drood” is big, bulky, outrageous, irritating, phantasmic. (A recent addition is “Spade and Archer,” a prequel to “The Maltese Falcon.”)Īnd yet, neither Simmons nor Pearl picks up where Dickens left off instead, each uses the circumstances surrounding Dickens’ final novel to create detective stories of his own. Do you remember “H.”? Lin Haire-Sargeant’s 1992 novel imagined Heathcliff’s life before his return in “Wuthering Heights.” At the time, people admired her ingenuity (did they forget about Jean Rhys’ “Wide Sargasso Sea”?) in filling the gaps of a classic work of fiction - now, the novelty has become a motley genre with a diverse membership. Prequels and sequels have long been part of the publishing landscape. The timing seems right for someone to take Dickens on again.

#Edmund drood full

(The full text of each, by the way, can be found on Google Books.) Before that, there was the wooden prose of 1914’s “A Great Mystery Solved” and “John Jasper’s Secret,” published just two years after Dickens’ death. Case,” but that (like “Drood,” the musical) is a game of multiple endings, not a serious attempt to finish the story. There have been attempts to finish Dickens’ murder book before, but not recent ones. Dickens left behind no notes, no outlines, nothing. Other characters are introduced as Jasper’s foils, and then Edwin disappears. Another rival for Rosa arrives, but Dickens stirs suspicions about Jasper, whose murderous looks at Edwin are unmistakable.

The six installments present us with tormented John Jasper, choirmaster and opium addict, who desires his nephew Edwin’s fiancee, Rosa Budd. He fell to the floor and never regained consciousness.Īudiences on both sides of the Atlantic were in agony. On the day before his death on June 9, 1870, Dickens wrote the final sentence of the sixth, dined with his family and suffered a stroke. Twelve installments were planned, but Dickens finished only half. The story of Dickens’ final book is legendary. That’s what I thought, eyeing the titles of Dan Simmons’ and Matthew Pearl’s new novels. What they find is the usual high octane writing style, brilliant inventiveness and perhaps a greater subtlety in characterisation than in many of the earlier works.įirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2011.So, Charles Dickens’ great fragment, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” has been finished by a contemporary writer?

Frances isn't afraid of joining these so-called 'Droodians' in trying to employ her crime-writer's insights to make sense of the pieces of the jigsaw left to us.īut her investigation, which takes her to Rochester where the novel is set, also examines the state of Dickens' mind at the time, and his fascination with the criminal mentality, including vintage Dickensian types like Mr Crisparkle, the angular Mr Grewgious and the hideous auctioneer Mr Sapsea.įrances and her colleagues also search the manuscript for signs of the author's failing health, and, perhaps more importantly, failing ability. The finger of suspicion points at Neville Landless but the author seems to be hinting at the guilt of a more sinister figure, the leader of the Cathedral choir, John Jasper.Įver since, Dickensian enthusiasts have searched the book for every hint of a clue as to what the author intended to do with the characters he'd created. He suffered a massive stroke later that day, 8 June 1870, and died the next day.īy that stage in Dickens' novel, Edwin has gone missing and it is suspected that he has been murdered but no body has been found. Edwin Drood.ĭickens died shortly after bringing the curtain down on Chapter 23, barely half way through the twelve monthly instalments.

#Edmund drood archive

'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' is a tantalising element of the Dickens manuscript archive held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.Īlong with fellow crime-writer Simon Brett and Dickens scholar Professor Jenny Hartley, Frances Fyfield uses the packed manuscript pages, detailed number plans and early cover designs to try and make sense of one of English Literature's great mysteries: what really happened to the eponymous hero.