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''This page refers to the 1870 novel by Charles Dickens.
''
'''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 hypocritical 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.
The story is set in Cloisterham, a lightly fictionalised Rochester, and feelingly evokes the atmosphere of the town as much as its streets and buildings.
The novel begins as a man, who we later learn is the choirmaster John Jasper, leaves a London opium den run by a woman later named as Princess Puffer. The next evening, Edwin Drood visits Jasper, his uncle, who is the choirmaster at Cloisterham Cathedral. Drood confides that he has misgivings about his betrothal to Rosa Bud, which had been arranged years before by Drood and Bud's respective fathers. (Both Drood and Rosa are now orphans.) The next day, Drood visits Bud at the Nun’s House, the boarding school where she lives. They quarrel good-naturedly, which they apparently do frequently during his visits. Meanwhile, Jasper visits the comically egotistical auctioneer, Thomas Sapsea, through whom he meets the stonemason, Stony Durdles, a man who knows more than anyone else about the cathedral cemetery. Interested in the cemetery, Jasper seeks Durdles’s company.
Mr. Honeythunder, a bullying philanthropist, places his orphaned wards, Neville Landless and his twin sister Helena, in Cloisterham for their education. Neville will study with the minor canon, Rev. Septimus Crisparkle; Helena will live at the Nun’s House with Bud. Neville confides to Crisparkle that he had hated his cruel step-father, while Bud confides to Helena that she loathes and fears her music-master, Jasper. Neville is immediately smitten with Rosa and is indignant that Drood prizes his betrothal lightly. He and Drood quarrel angrily, giving Jasper the opportunity to spread rumours about Neville's reputation of having a violent temper. Crisparkle tries to reconcile Drood and Neville, who agrees to apologize to Drood if the latter will forgive him. It is arranged that they will dine together for this purpose on Christmas Eve at Jasper’s home.
Bud’s guardian, Hiram Grewgious, tells her that she has a substantial inheritance from her father. When she asks whether there would be any forfeiture if she did not marry Drood, he replies that there would be none on either side. Back at his office in London, Grewgious gives Drood a ring which Bud’s father had given to her mother, with the caveat that Drood must either give the ring to Bud as a sign of his irrevocable commitment to her, or return it to Grewgious. Mr. Bazzard, Grewgious’s clerk, witnesses this transaction.
Bud and Drood amicably agree to end their betrothal. They decide to ask Grewgious to break the news to Jasper, and Drood intends to return the ring to Grewgious. Meanwhile, Durdles takes Jasper into the cathedral crypt. On the way there Durdles points out a mound of quicklime. Jasper provides a bottle of wine to Durdles- the wine is mysteriously potent, and Durdles soon loses consciousness; while unconscious he dreams that Jasper goes off by himself in the crypt.
On Christmas Eve, Neville Landless buys himself a heavy walking stick; he plans to spend his Christmas break hiking around the countryside. Meanwhile, Drood visits a jeweller in order to repair his pocket watch; it is mentioned that the only pieces of jewellery that he wears are the watch and chain and a shirt pin. By chance he meets a woman, who we later learn is Princess Puffer. She asks Drood's Christian name, and he replies that it is ‘Edwin’; she says he is fortunate it is not ‘Ned,’ for ‘Ned’ is in great danger. He thinks nothing of this, for the only person who calls him ‘Ned’ is Jasper. Meanwhile, Jasper buys himself a black scarf of strong silk, which is not seen again during the course of the novel. The reconciliation dinner is successful, and at midnight, Drood and Neville Landless leave together to go down to the river and look at a wind storm that rages that night.
The next morning Drood is missing, and Jasper spreads suspicion that Landless has killed him. Landless leaves early in the morning for his hike; the townspeople overtake him and bring him back to the city. Crisparkle keeps Landless out of jail by taking responsibility for him: he will produce him anytime his presence is required. That night Jasper is grief stricken when Grewgious informs him that Drood and Bud had ended their betrothal; he reacts more strongly to this news than to the prospect that Drood was dead. The next morning Crisparkle goes to the river weir and finds Drood’s watch and chain and his shirt pin; no other trace of him is found.
A half year later Neville Landless is living in London near Grewgious’s office. Mr. Tartar, a former naval officer who has retired young, befriends him; Tartar’s chambers are adjacent to Landless’s above a common courtyard. A stranger, who calls himself Dick Datchery, arrives in Cloisterham. He rents a room below Jasper and observes the comings and goings in the area.
Jasper visits Bud at the Nun’s House and professes his love for her. She rejects him, but he persists; he says that if she gives him no hope, he will destroy Landless, the brother of her dear friend Helena. In fear of Jasper, Bud goes to Grewgious in London. Grewgious mentions to her that his clerk, Bazzard, who is absent, has written a play.
The next day Crisparkle has followed Rosa to London. When he is with Grewgious and Bud, Tartar calls on him and asks if he remembers him. Crisparkle remembers him as the one who years ago saved him from drowning. They do not dare let Bud contact Neville and Helena directly for fear that Jasper may be watching Neville, but Tartar allows Bud to visit his chambers in order to contact Helena above the courtyard. Grewgious arranges for Bud to rent a place from Mrs. Billickin, a relative of Bazzard, and arranges for Miss Twinkleton, the mistress of the Nun’s House to live with her there so that she can live there respectably.
Jasper visits Princess Puffer’s opium den again for the first time since Drood’s disappearance. When he leaves at dawn, she follows him. She vows to herself that she will not lose his trail again as she did after his last visit. This time she follows him all the way to his home in Cloisterham; outside she meets Datchery, who tells her Jasper’s name and that he will sing the next morning in the cathedral service. The next morning Puffer attends the service and shakes her fists at Jasper from behind a pillar.
Dickens's death leaves the rest of the story unknown.
''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' was scheduled to be published in twelve installments (shorter than Dickens's usual twenty) from April 1870 to March 1871, each costing one shilling and illustrated by Luke Fildes. Only six of the installments were completed before Dickens's death in 1870. It is exactly half finished.
★ I - April 1870 (chapters 1-4);
★ II - May 1870 (chapters 5-9);
★ III - June 1870 (chapters 10-12);
★ IV - July 1870 (chapters 13-16);
★ V - August 1870 (chapters 17-20);
★ VI - September 1870 (chapters 21-23);
★ ''VII - October 1870 (planned);''
★ ''VIII - November 1870 (planned);''
★ ''IX - December 1870 (planned);''
★ ''X - January 1871 (planned);''
★ ''XI - February 1871 (planned);''
★ ''XII - March 1871 (planned).''
Supplying a conclusion to ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' has occupied writers from the time of Dickens's death to the present day, even involving some trying to get into spirit contact with the dead author. Two of the most recent of these posthumous collaborations are ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' by Charles Dickens and Leon Garfield (1980) and ''The Decoding of Edwin Drood'' (1980) by Dickens and Charles Forsyte. There was also a humorous continuation by the Italian tandem Fruttero & Lucentini.
To date, there have been four film adaptations of ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood''. The first two were silent pictures released in 1909 and 1914. They are unavailable to the general public and have been little-seen since they were released. A feature film version (the first ''Drood'' "talkie") was released to theaters in 1935 by Universal Pictures. Directed by Stuart Walker, it starred Claude Rains, Douglass Montgomery, Heather Angel, Valerie Hobson, and David Manners. A later theatrical adaptation was released in 1993.
Almost immediately following Charles Dickens's death, playwrights and theater companies have mounted versions of ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' with varying degrees of popularity, success, and faithfulness to the original work.
The first modern major theatrical adaptation was a musical comedy with book, music, and lyrics by Rupert Holmes. The production, originally known by the full name of ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'', but re-titled halfway through its original run to simply ''Drood'',[1] was first produced in 1985 by the New York Shakespeare Festival, and then transferred to Broadway, where it ran for 608 performances (and 24 previews). It won five 1986 Tonys, including Best Musical, as well as Drama Desk and Edgar awards. The musical has since played successfully in numerous regional and amateur productions.
Because Dickens's book was left unfinished, the musical hinges upon a novel idea: the audience decides by vote which of the characters is the murderer. Though it seems fairly clear that, barring a twist, John Jasper is Dickens's main suspect, the musical's suspect pool is broadened to include Jasper, Bud, and the Landlesses, along with the Reverend Crisparkle (with whom Neville Landless lives), a mysterious opium dealer called only the Princess Puffer, and a Mister Bazzard. Adding further interactivity, the audience also chooses one male and one female character to develop a romance together: Holmes wrote brief alternate endings for every possible voting outcome, even the most unlikely.
★ In 2005, Charles Dickens became, for one episode, a character in the science-fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. In the episode "The Unquiet Dead", Dickens encounters the Doctor and helps the time traveller fight off a ghostly alien invasion on Christmas Eve, 1869. During this episode, Dickens is portrayed by Simon Callow as an abrupt, inflexible individual, who believes he has experienced all that the world has to offer and refutes all suggestions by the Doctor regarding the true nature of the Gelth. The episode ends with Dickens declaring that his adventure with the Doctor has given him a new outlook on life in that there is so much more than he originally thought, excitedly states his intention to incorporate his adventure with the Doctor into his work in progress, ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'', and that the murderer would be revealed as one of the "blue elementals" that he'd encountered that night. The Doctor, upon departing 1869, sadly notes that Dickens would never get to finish his tale by saying "In a week's time, it will be 1870, and that's the year he dies".
★ Edwin Drood also is the name of a fictional band from the TV series ''Jonathan Creek'' - possibly a parody of the band Uriah Heep, who also owe their name to Dickens.
1. IBDB.com
★ ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' - Searchable HTML version.
★ ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' - An analysis explaining ''Edwin Drood's'' themes and allusions, and offering a solution to its mysteries, including the identity of Datchery and Jasper's split personality.
''
'''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 hypocritical 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.
The story is set in Cloisterham, a lightly fictionalised Rochester, and feelingly evokes the atmosphere of the town as much as its streets and buildings.
| Contents |
| Summary |
| Original publication |
| Continuations |
| Adaptations |
| Films |
| Theater |
| Pop culture references |
| References |
| External links |
Summary
The novel begins as a man, who we later learn is the choirmaster John Jasper, leaves a London opium den run by a woman later named as Princess Puffer. The next evening, Edwin Drood visits Jasper, his uncle, who is the choirmaster at Cloisterham Cathedral. Drood confides that he has misgivings about his betrothal to Rosa Bud, which had been arranged years before by Drood and Bud's respective fathers. (Both Drood and Rosa are now orphans.) The next day, Drood visits Bud at the Nun’s House, the boarding school where she lives. They quarrel good-naturedly, which they apparently do frequently during his visits. Meanwhile, Jasper visits the comically egotistical auctioneer, Thomas Sapsea, through whom he meets the stonemason, Stony Durdles, a man who knows more than anyone else about the cathedral cemetery. Interested in the cemetery, Jasper seeks Durdles’s company.
Mr. Honeythunder, a bullying philanthropist, places his orphaned wards, Neville Landless and his twin sister Helena, in Cloisterham for their education. Neville will study with the minor canon, Rev. Septimus Crisparkle; Helena will live at the Nun’s House with Bud. Neville confides to Crisparkle that he had hated his cruel step-father, while Bud confides to Helena that she loathes and fears her music-master, Jasper. Neville is immediately smitten with Rosa and is indignant that Drood prizes his betrothal lightly. He and Drood quarrel angrily, giving Jasper the opportunity to spread rumours about Neville's reputation of having a violent temper. Crisparkle tries to reconcile Drood and Neville, who agrees to apologize to Drood if the latter will forgive him. It is arranged that they will dine together for this purpose on Christmas Eve at Jasper’s home.
Bud’s guardian, Hiram Grewgious, tells her that she has a substantial inheritance from her father. When she asks whether there would be any forfeiture if she did not marry Drood, he replies that there would be none on either side. Back at his office in London, Grewgious gives Drood a ring which Bud’s father had given to her mother, with the caveat that Drood must either give the ring to Bud as a sign of his irrevocable commitment to her, or return it to Grewgious. Mr. Bazzard, Grewgious’s clerk, witnesses this transaction.
Bud and Drood amicably agree to end their betrothal. They decide to ask Grewgious to break the news to Jasper, and Drood intends to return the ring to Grewgious. Meanwhile, Durdles takes Jasper into the cathedral crypt. On the way there Durdles points out a mound of quicklime. Jasper provides a bottle of wine to Durdles- the wine is mysteriously potent, and Durdles soon loses consciousness; while unconscious he dreams that Jasper goes off by himself in the crypt.
On Christmas Eve, Neville Landless buys himself a heavy walking stick; he plans to spend his Christmas break hiking around the countryside. Meanwhile, Drood visits a jeweller in order to repair his pocket watch; it is mentioned that the only pieces of jewellery that he wears are the watch and chain and a shirt pin. By chance he meets a woman, who we later learn is Princess Puffer. She asks Drood's Christian name, and he replies that it is ‘Edwin’; she says he is fortunate it is not ‘Ned,’ for ‘Ned’ is in great danger. He thinks nothing of this, for the only person who calls him ‘Ned’ is Jasper. Meanwhile, Jasper buys himself a black scarf of strong silk, which is not seen again during the course of the novel. The reconciliation dinner is successful, and at midnight, Drood and Neville Landless leave together to go down to the river and look at a wind storm that rages that night.
The next morning Drood is missing, and Jasper spreads suspicion that Landless has killed him. Landless leaves early in the morning for his hike; the townspeople overtake him and bring him back to the city. Crisparkle keeps Landless out of jail by taking responsibility for him: he will produce him anytime his presence is required. That night Jasper is grief stricken when Grewgious informs him that Drood and Bud had ended their betrothal; he reacts more strongly to this news than to the prospect that Drood was dead. The next morning Crisparkle goes to the river weir and finds Drood’s watch and chain and his shirt pin; no other trace of him is found.
A half year later Neville Landless is living in London near Grewgious’s office. Mr. Tartar, a former naval officer who has retired young, befriends him; Tartar’s chambers are adjacent to Landless’s above a common courtyard. A stranger, who calls himself Dick Datchery, arrives in Cloisterham. He rents a room below Jasper and observes the comings and goings in the area.
Jasper visits Bud at the Nun’s House and professes his love for her. She rejects him, but he persists; he says that if she gives him no hope, he will destroy Landless, the brother of her dear friend Helena. In fear of Jasper, Bud goes to Grewgious in London. Grewgious mentions to her that his clerk, Bazzard, who is absent, has written a play.
The next day Crisparkle has followed Rosa to London. When he is with Grewgious and Bud, Tartar calls on him and asks if he remembers him. Crisparkle remembers him as the one who years ago saved him from drowning. They do not dare let Bud contact Neville and Helena directly for fear that Jasper may be watching Neville, but Tartar allows Bud to visit his chambers in order to contact Helena above the courtyard. Grewgious arranges for Bud to rent a place from Mrs. Billickin, a relative of Bazzard, and arranges for Miss Twinkleton, the mistress of the Nun’s House to live with her there so that she can live there respectably.
Jasper visits Princess Puffer’s opium den again for the first time since Drood’s disappearance. When he leaves at dawn, she follows him. She vows to herself that she will not lose his trail again as she did after his last visit. This time she follows him all the way to his home in Cloisterham; outside she meets Datchery, who tells her Jasper’s name and that he will sing the next morning in the cathedral service. The next morning Puffer attends the service and shakes her fists at Jasper from behind a pillar.
Dickens's death leaves the rest of the story unknown.
Original publication
''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' was scheduled to be published in twelve installments (shorter than Dickens's usual twenty) from April 1870 to March 1871, each costing one shilling and illustrated by Luke Fildes. Only six of the installments were completed before Dickens's death in 1870. It is exactly half finished.
★ I - April 1870 (chapters 1-4);
★ II - May 1870 (chapters 5-9);
★ III - June 1870 (chapters 10-12);
★ IV - July 1870 (chapters 13-16);
★ V - August 1870 (chapters 17-20);
★ VI - September 1870 (chapters 21-23);
★ ''VII - October 1870 (planned);''
★ ''VIII - November 1870 (planned);''
★ ''IX - December 1870 (planned);''
★ ''X - January 1871 (planned);''
★ ''XI - February 1871 (planned);''
★ ''XII - March 1871 (planned).''
Continuations
Supplying a conclusion to ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' has occupied writers from the time of Dickens's death to the present day, even involving some trying to get into spirit contact with the dead author. Two of the most recent of these posthumous collaborations are ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' by Charles Dickens and Leon Garfield (1980) and ''The Decoding of Edwin Drood'' (1980) by Dickens and Charles Forsyte. There was also a humorous continuation by the Italian tandem Fruttero & Lucentini.
Adaptations
Films
To date, there have been four film adaptations of ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood''. The first two were silent pictures released in 1909 and 1914. They are unavailable to the general public and have been little-seen since they were released. A feature film version (the first ''Drood'' "talkie") was released to theaters in 1935 by Universal Pictures. Directed by Stuart Walker, it starred Claude Rains, Douglass Montgomery, Heather Angel, Valerie Hobson, and David Manners. A later theatrical adaptation was released in 1993.
Theater
Almost immediately following Charles Dickens's death, playwrights and theater companies have mounted versions of ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' with varying degrees of popularity, success, and faithfulness to the original work.
The first modern major theatrical adaptation was a musical comedy with book, music, and lyrics by Rupert Holmes. The production, originally known by the full name of ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'', but re-titled halfway through its original run to simply ''Drood'',[1] was first produced in 1985 by the New York Shakespeare Festival, and then transferred to Broadway, where it ran for 608 performances (and 24 previews). It won five 1986 Tonys, including Best Musical, as well as Drama Desk and Edgar awards. The musical has since played successfully in numerous regional and amateur productions.
Because Dickens's book was left unfinished, the musical hinges upon a novel idea: the audience decides by vote which of the characters is the murderer. Though it seems fairly clear that, barring a twist, John Jasper is Dickens's main suspect, the musical's suspect pool is broadened to include Jasper, Bud, and the Landlesses, along with the Reverend Crisparkle (with whom Neville Landless lives), a mysterious opium dealer called only the Princess Puffer, and a Mister Bazzard. Adding further interactivity, the audience also chooses one male and one female character to develop a romance together: Holmes wrote brief alternate endings for every possible voting outcome, even the most unlikely.
Pop culture references
★ In 2005, Charles Dickens became, for one episode, a character in the science-fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. In the episode "The Unquiet Dead", Dickens encounters the Doctor and helps the time traveller fight off a ghostly alien invasion on Christmas Eve, 1869. During this episode, Dickens is portrayed by Simon Callow as an abrupt, inflexible individual, who believes he has experienced all that the world has to offer and refutes all suggestions by the Doctor regarding the true nature of the Gelth. The episode ends with Dickens declaring that his adventure with the Doctor has given him a new outlook on life in that there is so much more than he originally thought, excitedly states his intention to incorporate his adventure with the Doctor into his work in progress, ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'', and that the murderer would be revealed as one of the "blue elementals" that he'd encountered that night. The Doctor, upon departing 1869, sadly notes that Dickens would never get to finish his tale by saying "In a week's time, it will be 1870, and that's the year he dies".
★ Edwin Drood also is the name of a fictional band from the TV series ''Jonathan Creek'' - possibly a parody of the band Uriah Heep, who also owe their name to Dickens.
References
1. IBDB.com
External links
★ ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' - Searchable HTML version.
★ ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' - An analysis explaining ''Edwin Drood's'' themes and allusions, and offering a solution to its mysteries, including the identity of Datchery and Jasper's split personality.
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