The Mystery of Edwin Drood

the Mystery of Edwin Drood ( The Mystery off Edwin Drood ) is the last novel, unfinished, of Charles Dickens.

An unfinished intrigue

When Charles Dickens died suddenly, in June 1870, he had written six of the twelve monthly deliveries in which he intended to make appear in serial the Mystery of Edwin Drood.

With this account, it clearly made work of pioneer of the Detective novel, breaking with the purely literary character and the quiet rate/rhythm of its preceding works, such Bleak House or Our mutual friend . In the Mystery of Edwin Drood , the narration is indeed narrowly centered on only one and mysterious event: the disappearance of the character who gives his title to the novel, the young person and gracious Edwin Drood, seemingly filled by the solicitude of his/her uncle John Jasper, Master of chorus to the cathedral of Cloisterham, like by the prospect for a marriage with his/her orphan comrade Rosa Bud.

To marble first of all carries out the survey into the fate of its nephew and its suspicions move towards irascible Neville Landless, recently arrived at Cloisterham with his/her Helena sister. At the same time, the doubts of the reader carry on Jasper itself, because it carries out a double life, being opium addict at his hours, and, which more serious from the point of view of the mobile, it is in love with Rosa. In addition, Jasper was unaware of that Edwin and Rosa had in fact broken their engagement, the disappearance day before even of Edwin. However, when he learns it, he undergoes a strong commotion of it. Is it necessary to see a sign of seizure there, vis-a-vis the all the more odious character from now on of its crime which it proves to have been free?

To marble does not continue of them Rosa month of its assiduities, so much so that this one takes fear and flees in London. It finds there refuge near its tutor, Mr. Grewgious, which is assisted by his Bazzard clerk and an obliging neighbor, the sailor reprocesses Tartar of it.

On these entrefaites in Cloisterham a detective claiming appears to be called Dick Datchery, whose abundant mane white, described with insistence, leads the reader to think that it is, under a disguise, an already known character of the reader. It is there that the text of Dickens stops.

Interpretations of the novel

Dickens thus left behind him exactly the kind of challenge which the set ones on literary history and in love ones with the detective novel never could resist. Obviously, the principal mystery is the fate of Edwin Drood. Did it simulate its own disappearance or it was killed? If he died, which killed it?

But the enigma does not stop here. Who is Dick Datchery? If he is not a new character, that Dickens would have surely hesitated to introduce at this advanced stage of the intrigue, is he Mr. Grewgious, the tutor of Rosa, his Bazzard clerk, which one says to us that he is close to the mediums of the theater, the Tartar sailor or even Helena Landless?

Who will Rosa choose to marry among its sighing? If it is not probably Drood nor To marble, could it be a question of Tartar or Neville?

And which role will play in the outcome the supporting characters, like the " Puffer" princess; , tenancière of the London smoking of opium where Jasper has her practices, or Durdles, the stone mason who guided this last in the meanders of the cathedral, during a curious night forwarding?

The speculations started in the months which followed the death of Dickens, initially with a not very advisable aim to earn money with a subject with the mode. A continuation of the Mystère of Edwin Drood was already published in the United States in 1871 per Henry Moorland. Another attempt, in 1873, was presented like having spouted out " the phantom feather of Charles Dickens, via a médium".

" suites" romantic more sizeable followed, at side of which emerged an increasing quantity of erudite tests, indexed in 1912 by Sir William Robertson Nicoll in the problem of the Mystery of Edwin Drood , then by Richard Stewart in End Game , published in 1999. Among the scholars who are leaning on the mystery of Edwin Drood, one raises the name of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, celebrates author of detective novels having for hero the Brown abbot.

These analysts are often not agreement between them in connection with the identity of Datchery, but they regard usually Jasper as the criminal of the history. Admittedly, although Jasper is vigorously defended by some, its culpability would obviously place the novel in the line of other works of Dickens, with their characters carrying out a double life and their murderers haunted by the remorse.

Those which try to determine the end of the novel seek indices not only in the part written by Dickens, but also in its working notes, the list of the titles which it had projected for its book and in the oral remarks of the writer, brought back after his death by close relations. But these sources are ambiguous and do nothing but highlight the questions instead of providing the answers of them.

One of the most important indices is the cover design of the monthly deliveries, outlined by the son-in-law of Dickens, Charles Collins, then carried out by Samuel Luke Fildes on the indications of Dickens itself. One sees several scenes there not appearing in the part written by Dickens. Mysterious sighing a man with a moustache, who is not Edwin Drood, courts Rosa. A series of characters, of which some were police officers in the draft of Charles Collins, climb a staircase in spiral following Jasper. Y also appears, in central position, a strange scene of meeting between Jasper, which enters an obscure room by holding up a lantern, and Edwin Drood, which seems to await it in a hieratic posture, a such statue of commander. Is Edwin alive, income to confront itself with its adversary? This is a dream To marble under the effect of drug, as would tend to indicate it the vapors of opiums which surround the scene, coming from the pipes of the " Puffer" princess; and of its Chinese assistant? Or is it about another character of the history, for example Datchery, which makes accept the presence of Edwin to cause the confession To marble?

An amusing work, which is the only one with being usually available in French, interferes at the same time the original text Dickens, a research of the end of the Mystère of Edwin Drood and a fiction which is clean for him: it is about Business D. or the crime of the false vagrant , written with humor by the Italian tandem Fruttero & Lucentini. The unfinished novel is intersected there with scenes being held nowadays, at the time of a congress the purpose of which is to solve the mystery. This majestic assembly joins together the majority of the detectives of fiction, among which one notices Hercule Poirot, Maigret, Philip Marlowe, the abbot Brown etc

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