The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The novel begins as John Jasper leaves a London opium den.[4] The next evening, Edwin Drood visits Jasper, who is the choirmaster at Cloisterham Cathedral and also his uncle. Edwin confides that he has misgivings about his betrothal to Rosa Bud, which had been previously arranged by their respective fathers. The next day, Edwin visits Rosa at the Nuns' House, the boarding school where she lives. They quarrel good-naturedly, which they apparently do frequently during his visits. Meanwhile, Jasper, having an interest in the cathedral crypt, seeks the company of Durdles, a man who knows more about the crypt than anyone else.

Neville Landless and his twin sister Helena are sent to Cloisterham for their education. Neville will study with the minor canon Rev. Crisparkle; Helena will live at the Nuns' House with Rosa. Neville confides to Rev. Crisparkle that he had hated his cruel stepfather, while Rosa confides to Helena that she loathes and fears her music-master, Jasper. Neville is immediately smitten with Rosa and is indignant that Edwin prizes his betrothal lightly. Edwin provokes him and he reacts violently, giving Jasper the opportunity to spread rumours about Neville's having a violent temper. Rev. Crisparkle tries to reconcile Edwin and Neville, who agrees to apologise to Edwin if the former will forgive him. It is arranged that they will dine together for this purpose on Christmas Eve at Jasper's home.

Rosa's guardian, Mr. 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 Edwin, he replies that there would be none on either side. Back at his office in London, Mr. Grewgious gives Edwin a ring which Rosa's father had given to her mother, with the proviso that Edwin must either give the ring to Rosa as a sign of his irrevocable commitment to her or return it to Mr. Grewgious. Mr. Bazzard, Mr. Grewgious's clerk, witnesses this transaction.

Next day, Rosa and Edwin amicably agree to end their betrothal. They decide to ask Mr. Grewgious to break the news to Jasper, and Edwin intends to return the ring to Mr. 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. As they return from the crypt, they encounter a boy called Deputy, and Jasper, thinking he was spying on them, takes him by the throat – but, seeing that this will strangle him, lets him go.

On Christmas Eve, Neville buys himself a heavy walking stick; he plans to spend his Christmas break hiking around the countryside. Meanwhile, Edwin visits a jeweler to repair his pocket watch; it is mentioned that the only pieces of jewelery that he wears are the watch and chain and a shirt pin. By chance he meets a woman who is an opium user from London. 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 Edwin is missing and Jasper spreads suspicion that Neville has killed him. Neville leaves early in the morning for his hike; the townspeople overtake him and forcibly bring him back to the city. Rev. Crisparkle keeps Neville out of jail by taking responsibility for him, stating that he will produce Neville anytime his presence is required. That night, Jasper is grief-stricken when Mr. Grewgious informs him that Edwin and Rosa had ended their betrothal; he reacts more strongly to this news than to the prospect that Edwin may be dead. The next morning, Rev. Crisparkle goes to the river weir and finds Edwin's watch and chain and shirt pin.

A half-year later, Neville is living in London near Mr. Grewgious's office. Lieutenant Tartar introduces himself and offers to share his garden with Landless; Lt. Tartar's chambers are adjacent to Neville's above a common courtyard. A white-haired and -whiskered stranger calling himself Dick Datchery arrives in Cloisterham. He rents a room below Jasper and observes the comings and goings in the area. On his way to the lodging the first time, Mr. Datchery asks directions from Deputy. Deputy will not go near there for fear that Jasper will choke him again.

Jasper visits Rosa at the Nuns' House and professes his love for her. She rejects him but he persists, telling her that if she gives him no hope he will destroy Neville, the brother of her dear friend Helena. In fear of Jasper, Rosa goes to Mr. Grewgious in London.

The next day Rev. Crisparkle follows Rosa to London. When he is with Mr. Grewgious and Rosa, Lt. Tartar calls and asks if he remembers him. Rev. Crisparkle does remember him as the one who years before saved him from drowning. They do not dare let Rosa contact Neville and Helena directly, for fear that Jasper may be watching Neville, but Mr. Tartar allows Rosa to visit his chambers to contact Helena above the courtyard. Mr. Grewgious arranges for Rosa to rent a place from Mrs. Billickin and for Miss Twinkleton to live with her there so that she can live there respectably.

Jasper visits the London opium den again for the first time since Edwin's disappearance. When he leaves at dawn, the woman who runs the opium den 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. On inquiry, Datchery learns she is called "Princess Puffer." The next morning she attends the service and shakes her fists at Jasper from behind a pillar.

Dickens's death leaves the rest of the story unknown. According to his friend and biographer John Forster, after Dickens had written him two brief letters which relate to the plot (but not the murder), he had supplied Forster with an outline of the full plot:

His first fancy for the tale was expressed in a letter in the middle of July. "What should you think of the idea of a story beginning in this way?—Two people, boy and girl, or very young, going apart from one another, pledged to be married after many years—at the end of the book. The interest to arise out of the tracing of their separate ways, and the impossibility of telling what will be done with that impending fate." This was laid aside; but it left a marked trace on the story as afterwards designed, in the position of Edwin Drood and his betrothed. I first heard of the later design in a letter dated "Friday the 6th of August 1869", in which after speaking, with the usual unstinted praise he bestowed always on what moved him in others, of a little tale he had received for his journal, he spoke of the change that had occurred to him for the new tale by himself. "I laid aside the fancy I told you of, and have a very curious and new idea for my new story. Not a communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work." The story, I learnt immediately afterward, was to be that of the murder of a nephew by his uncle; the originality of which was to consist in the review of the murderer's career by himself at the close, when its temptations were to be dwelt upon as if, not he the culprit, but some other man, were the tempted. The last chapters were to be written in the condemned cell, to which his wickedness, all elaborately elicited from him as if told of another, had brought him. Discovery by the murderer of the utter needlessness of the murder for its object, was to follow hard upon commission of the deed; but all discovery of the murderer was to be baffled till towards the close, when, by means of a gold ring which had resisted the corrosive effects of the lime into which he had thrown the body, not only the person murdered was to be identified but the locality of the crime and the man who committed it. So much was told to me before any of the book was written; and it will be recollected that the ring, taken by Drood to be given to his betrothed only if their engagement went on, was brought away with him from their last interview. Rosa was to marry Tartar, and Crisparkle the sister of Landless, who was himself, I think, to have perished in assisting Tartar finally to unmask and seize the murderer.[5]

• Edwin Drood: an orphan. When he comes of age, he plans to marry Rosa Bud and go to Egypt, working as an engineer with the firm in which his father had been a partner.
• Rosa Bud: an orphan and Edwin Drood's fiancée. Their betrothal was arranged by their fathers.
• John Jasper: the choirmaster of Cloisterham Cathedral, Edwin Drood's uncle and guardian (though not much older than Drood), and Rosa Bud's music master. He secretly loves Rosa. He visits an opium den in London. It is implied (see evidence below) that Dickens intended to make him the murderer.
• Neville and Helena Landless: twin orphans. They are from Ceylon, but it is not clear to what extent they are Ceylonese. In their childhood they were mistreated and deprived. Neville is immediately smitten by Rosa Bud. He is more proud than is good for him, and his integrity prevents him from making an insincere apology to Drood. Helena and Rosa become dear friends.
• Rev. Septimus Crisparkle: minor canon of Cloisterham Cathedral and Neville Landless's mentor.
• Mr. (Hiram) Grewgious: a London lawyer and Rosa Bud's guardian. He was a friend of her parents.
• Mr. Bazzard: Mr. Grewgious's clerk. He is absent from that post when Datchery is in Cloisterham. He has written a play.
• (Stony) Durdles: a stonemason. He knows more than anyone else about the Cloisterham Cathedral cemetery.
• Deputy: a small boy. "Deputy" is not his name but rather a handle he uses for anonymity. If he catches Durdles out after 10 pm, he throws rocks at him until he goes home. Durdles pays him a halfpenny for doing so.
• Dick Datchery: a stranger who takes lodging in Cloisterham for a month or two. He becomes interested in Jasper and in Princess Puffer.
• Princess Puffer: a haggard woman who runs a London opium den frequented by Jasper. She is unnamed in most of the book. "Princess Puffer" is the handle by which Deputy knows her.
• Mr. (Thomas) Sapsea: a comically conceited auctioneer. By the time of Drood's disappearance he has become Mayor of Cloisterham.
• The Dean: the Dean is the most senior clergyman at Cloisterham Cathedral, a man of some gravitas to whom others behave with fitting deference. In return he can be rather condescending.
• Mr. Tope: the verger of Cloisterham Cathedral.
• Mrs. Tope: the verger's wife. She cooks for Jasper and rents lodging to Datchery.
• Miss Twinkleton: the mistress of the Nuns' House, the boarding school where Rosa lives.
• Mrs. Tisher: Miss Twinkleton's assistant at the Nuns' House.
• Mrs. Crisparkle: Rev. Crisparkle's widowed mother.
• Mr. (Luke) Honeythunder: a bullying London philanthropist. He is Neville and Helena Landless's guardian.
• Mr. Tartar: a retired naval officer. He resigned his commission in his late twenties when an uncle left him some property, but he lives in London, being unaccustomed to the space of a large estate.
• Mrs. Billickin: a widowed distant cousin of Mr. Bazzard. She rents lodging in London to Rosa and Miss Twinkleton.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood was scheduled to be published in twelve instalments (shorter than Dickens's usual twenty) from April 1870 to February 1871, each costing one shilling and illustrated by Luke Fildes. Only six of the instalments were completed before Dickens's death in 1870. It was therefore approximately half finished.

• I: April 1870 (chapters 1–5)
• II: May 1870 (chapters 6–9)
• III: June 1870 (chapters 10–12)
• IV: July 1870 (chapters 13–16)
• V: August 1870 (chapters 17–20)
• VI: September 1870 (chapters 21–23)

Planned instalments never published:

• VII: October 1870
• VIII: November 1870
• IX: December 1870
• X: January 1871
• XI, XII: February 1871

Supplying a conclusion to The Mystery of Edwin Drood has occupied writers from the time of Dickens' death to the present day.

The first three attempts to complete the story were undertaken by Americans. The first, by Robert Henry Newell, published under the pen name Orpheus C. Kerr in 1870,[9] was as much a parody as a continuation, transplanting the story to the United States. It is a "burlesque" farce rather than a serious attempt to continue in the spirit of the original story.

The second ending was written by Henry Morford, a New York journalist. He travelled to Rochester with his wife and published the ending serially during his stay in England from 1871–1872. In this ending, Edwin Drood survives Jasper's murder attempt. Datchery is Bazzard in disguise, but Helena disguises herself as well to overhear Jasper's mumbling under the influence of opium. Entitled John Jasper's Secret: Sequel to Charles Dickens' Mystery of Edwin Drood, it was rumoured to have been authored by Charles Dickens, Jr. and Wilkie Collins, despite Collins' disavowal.[10]

The third attempt was perhaps the most unusual. In 1873, a Brattleboro, Vermont printer, Thomas Power James, published a version which he claimed had been literally 'ghost-written' by him channeling Dickens' spirit.[11][12][13] A sensation was created, with several critics, including Arthur Conan Doyle, a spiritualist himself, praising this version, calling it similar in style to Dickens' work; and for several decades the James version of Edwin Drood was common in America. Other Drood scholars disagree. John C. Walters "dismiss[ed it] with contempt", stating that the work "is self-condemned by its futility, illiteracy, and hideous American mannerisms; the mystery itself becomes a nightmare, and the solution only deepens the obscurity."[14]

Four of the most recent of the posthumous collaborations are The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Leon Garfield (1980), The Decoding of Edwin Drood (1980) by Charles Forsyte, The Disappearance of Edwin Drood, a Holmesian pastiche by Peter Rowland (1992), and The Mystery of Edwin Drood by David Madden (2011).[15] There was also a humorous continuation by the Italian duo Fruttero & Lucentini entitled The D Case.

In January 1914 the Dickens Fellowship organised a dramatic "trial" in the King's Hall, Covent Garden. John Jasper (played by Frederick T. Harry) stood trial for the murder of Edwin Drood. G. K. Chesterton, best known for the Father Brown mystery stories, was the judge, and George Bernard Shaw was the foreman of the jury, which was made up of other authors. J. Cuming Walters, author of The Complete Edwin Drood, led the prosecution, while Cecil Chesterton acted for the defence.

Proceedings were very light-hearted; Shaw in particular made wisecracks at the expense of others present. For instance, Shaw claimed that if the prosecution thought that producing evidence would influence the jury then "he little knows his functions".[16]

The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter, Shaw stating that it was a compromise on the grounds that there was not enough evidence to convict Jasper but that they did not want to run the risk of being murdered in their beds. Both sides protested and demanded that the jury be discharged. Shaw claimed that the jury would be only too pleased to be discharged. Chesterton ruled that the mystery of Edwin Drood was insoluble and fined everyone, except himself, for contempt of court.[17]

• The book and several of the characters are referred to in the ghost story An Episode of Cathedral History by M. R. James, an admirer of Dickens. Dickens' description of the Cathedral in Drood is affectionately mocked by James when one of his characters remarks on the peculiarity of some of its practices.
• In The Long Divorce by Edmund Crispin, the protagonist adopts the pseudonym Datchery when asked to investigate a crime.
• Edwin Drood is the name of a fictional band from the TV series Jonathan Creek.
• Edwin Drood is the name of the protagonist in the novel The Man with the Golden Torc, the first novel in the Secret History series by Simon R. Green.
• The 1999 novel Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee references Edwin Drood as the novel that Lucy reads before the crime on her farm.
• A 2005 episode of the television series Doctor Who, "The Unquiet Dead", shows a fictional Charles Dickens during the Christmas before his death, in 1869, overcoming his scepticism of the supernatural and fighting gaseous creatures together with the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. The episode suggests that Dickens's last novel will be completed as The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the Blue Elementals with Edwin's killer being, not his Uncle as originally intended, but rather blue creatures "not of this earth" inspired by the Gelth. The Doctor explains to Rose however that Dickens dies before he is able to finish the novel.[30]
• The 2004 novel Monsieur Dick by Jean-Pierre Ohl (translated, 2008, by Christine Donougher) is the story of a feud between two French Drood scholars, interposed with the unreliable journal of a young Frenchman who visits Dickens shortly before he dies.[31]
• The 2009 novel Drood by Dan Simmons is a fictionalised account of the last five years of Dickens's life and the writing of and inspirations for the novel.
• The 2009 novel The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl is a fictionalised account of events after Dickens's death related to his unfinished novel.
• In Assassin's Creed Syndicate there is a cutscene where the main character Jacob has a chance encounter with Dickens, who loses some pages from his notes, possibly causing the novel to be unfinished. A mission within the game regarding a murder investigation ostensibly provides Dickens with the inspiration for the novel.
• A 2012 episode of the Dickensian pastiche comedy radio series Bleak Expectations, A Writerly Life Made Dreadfully Different, sees the narrator Sir Philip 'Pip' Bin compete in a novel-writing contest with Charles Dickens for the title of Britain's greatest author. It is revealed that Dickens was in fact Bin's arch-nemesis Gently Benevolent in disguise, having kidnapped the real Dickens and forced him to write The Mystery of Edwin Drood as a submission. Harry Biscuit, Bin's best friend, enraged by Bin's theft of his novel and under demonic possession from the Pen of Penrith, kills Dickens with a bust of him and eats the ending of Edwin Drood.
• The 2015 novel Helena Landless by Deanna Madden re-tells the story from the point of view of the character Helena Landless.
• Rev. Crisparkle and Mrs. Tisher appear as characters in the BBC One television series Dickensian.

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• The Mystery of Edwin Drood 2012 Musical Revival London .
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• The Mystery of Edwin Drood public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood—The original manuscript of the novel, held by the Victoria and Albert Museum (requires Adobe Flash).
• About Edwin Drood, via Internet Archive. A collection of 19th and early 20th century books exploring the mysteries and offering solutions.