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Edwin Drood is contracted to marry Orphan Rosa, but they break the engagement off-and soon afterwards Edwin disappears. Is it murder? And is his jealous uncle-a sinister choirmaster with a double life and designs on Rosa-the killer? Dickens died before completing the story, leaving the mystery unsolved and encouraging successive generations of readers to turn detective. In addition to its tantalizing crime, the novel also offers a characteristically Dickensian mix of the fantastical world of the imagination and a vibrantly journalistic depiction of gritty reality. This edition features a new critical introduction that assesses the evidence to show whether the mystery can truly be solved, as well as a chronology, illustrations, appendixes (including one on opium use in the nineteenth century). Edited with an introduction and notes by David Paroissien.
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THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD was born in Portsmouth on February , the second of eight children. Dickens’s childhood experiences were similar to those depicted in David Copperfield. His father, who was a government clerk, was imprisoned for debt and Dickens was briefly sent to work in a blacking warehouse at the age of twelve. He received little formal education, but taught himself shorthand and became a reporter of parliamentary debates for the Morning Chronicle. He began to publish sketches in various periodicals, which were subsequently republished as Sketches by Boz. The Pickwick Papers was published in – and after a slow start became a publishing phenomenon and Dickens’s characters the centre of a popular cult. Part of the secret of his success was the method of cheap serial publication he adopted; thereafter, all Dickens’s novels were first published in serial form. He began Oliver Twist in , followed by Nicholas Nickleby ( ) and The Old Curiosity Shop ( – ). After finishing Barnaby Rudge ( ) Dickens set off for America; he went full of enthusiasm for the young republic but, in spite of a triumphant reception, he returned disillusioned. His experiences are recorded in American Notes ( ). A Christmas Carol, the first of the hugely popular Christmas Books, appeared in , while Martin Chuzzlewit, which included a fictionalized account of his American travels, was first published over the period – . During – Dickens travelled abroad and he began Dombey and Son while in Switzerland. This and David Copperfield ( – ) were more serious in theme and more carefully planned than his early novels. In later works, such as Bleak House ( ) and Little Dorrit ( ), Dickens’s social criticism became more radical and his comedy more savage. In Dickens started the weekly periodical Household Words, succeeded in by All the Year Round; in these he published Hard Times ( ), A Tale of Two Cities ( ) and Great Expectations ( – ). Dickens’s health was failing during the s and the physical strain of the public readings which he began in hastened his decline, although Our Mutual Friend ( ) retained some of his best comedy. His last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was never completed and he died on June . Public grief at his death was considerable and he was buried in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. was educated in England and in the United States. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA. He now lives in Oxford, where he has recently retired as Emeritus Professor of English after teaching at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, since . He edits the Dickens Quarterly and works with Susan Shatto as co-editor of The Dickens Companions. He has contributed two volumes to this series, most recently The Companion to ‘Great Expectations’ ( ). THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD with an Introduction and Notes by