The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Review of the novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

Published by Chapman & Hall in 1870. (BBC Books 2012)

Cost: £7.99

ISBN 978-1-84-990427-8 (Paperback Edition – 279 pages)

Charles Dickens is a favourite author of mine, but talking to a friend I realised that I had not read this story - perhaps because it was an unfinished story. As with many of Dickens’ stories they were written in instalments, being published monthly – (in this instance, instalment 1 in April 1870, chapters 1-5 and instalment 6 in September 1870, chapters 21-23) – only the first six of the twelve planned instalments were published; so it’s an unfinished story. Since the death of Dickens, a number of authors have tried to write the final chapters, based on the development of the characters in the early chapters.

The book I have reviewed has an Afterword by screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes who was asked by the BBC to write a possible ending to the story that they wanted to make into a TV programme (January 2012). Hughes Afterword is just over four pages long, with ideas drawn from the published chapters, she presents an interesting ending to the tale. The Mystery of Edwin Drood story has also been performed as a musical comedy: in an adaptation by Rupert Holmes the play pauses to let the audience vote on how the play should end, selecting from a choice of alternate endings.

Dickens opens the novel with an introduction to one of the main characters of the story, John Jasper, the choirmaster of Cloisterham Cathedral, Edwin Drood’s uncle and guardian. We find him in an opium den in East part of London. Dickens describes the scene in detail so that the reader is in no doubt of the effects of smoking the drug; Jasper passes out in his effort to leave the building.

The story turns to the activities in the fictitious Cathedral town of Cloisterham. Here the reader is introduced to Edwin Drood and the young girl he is engaged to, Miss Rosa Bud; their engagement planned by their deceased parents. However, Rosa has a number of admirers. When discussing his relationship with his friend Neville Landless, they have a bitter argument, giving rise to John Jasper spreading rumours about Neville’s violent temper. When Edwin and Rosa next meet they agree to end their betrothal. A few days later, on Christmas Eve, there is a storm, and it is the last time Edwin Drood is seen. He is believed to have been murdered, a story spread by John Jasper, with the ulterior motive of his desire for the love of Rosa. This is the beginnings of the murder mystery set out by Dickens.

In The Mystery of Edwin Drood, we are taken into the world of Dickens, his beautiful descriptions, of locations and characters. When I read Chapter XI, it was so enjoyable I stopped to read it again:

‘Behind the most ancient part of Holborn, London, where certain gabled houses some centuries of age still stand looking on the public way, as if disconsolately looking for the Old Bourne that has a long run dry, is a little nook composed of two irregular quadrangles, called Staple Inn.’

Here we find Mr Grewgious, a solicitor, in his chambers. This afternoon he sits by his fire, and so does his clerk Bazzard. We know we are reading Dickens as he describes Bazzard:

‘A pale, puffy-faced, dark-haired person of thirty, with big dark eyes that wholly wanted lustre, and a dissatisfied doughy complexion, that seemed to ask to be sent to the baker’s, this attendant was a mysterious being. … A gloomy person with tangled locks and a general air of having been reared under the shadow of that baleful tree of Java which has given shelter to more lies than the whole botanical kingdom.’

It’s a wonderful description of the subservient employee. Dickens continues in this style when Edwin Drood arrives:

‘Edwin took the easy-chair in the corner; and the fog he had brought with him, and the fog he took off with his greatcoat and neck-shawl, was speedily licked up by the fire.’

The reader is left in no doubt how the smog and fog of London clung to its inhabitants. As we might expect in this story, Dickens introduces us to some wonderful characters, but as we only know of them in a story that was not finished, I would have expected them to have been developed further, particularly the main characters.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood has the makings of a great story, but it is only half finished, so unless we read the chapters finished by other authors, we are left wanting more. I am a great fan of Dickens work and I would have loved to have read his descriptions of Christmas and the tales of difficult times for his characters in the period of this story. Rating 4 stars.

Dr James Sheppard

31 March 2015