Tomb Raiders

What primarily struck me about this instalment is the melancholy sense of stasis, wearisomeness, decrepitude and decomposition. It is tempting, but possibly facile, to read this tone as the sadness, or heightened sense of mortality, of an increasingly unwell, middle-aged man – a literary foreshadowing of the author’s impending death. Yet, this sense of a …

First monthly number: case review

Today on the Drood Inquiry you can see the first part of our case notes – a graphic summary of the first monthly part and its main plot points (see http://www.droodinquiry.com/case_review/ ). At present of course our followers are all taking the opportunity to read the full text in its original instalments, but when the …

The tenderer scandal of Cloisterham: two early reviews

We’ve been sharing our own initial response to month one of Drood (see https://cloisterhamtales.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/first-monthly-number-april-1870/), but what did Dickens’s contemporaries make of it? It was usual practice at the time for reviews to appear only after the final instalment had been published – so the fact that we have reviews for the first month at all …

First monthly number: April 1870

‘Back to the big brushes’ was Dickens’s observation as he prepared to start composing Our Mutual Friend* in monthly parts in 1863, having previously written two novels on the trot in weekly parts. I’m reminded of this because I’m coming to this exciting Drood Inquiry parallelproject having previously been involved in blogging about one of …