Category Archives: The Drood Inquiry – Early Solutions
The Invisible Woman and Drood
With Ralph Fiennes’s big-screen adaptation of Clare Tomalin’s biography of Ellen Ternan set to premiere this month, it seemed an appropriate time to consider the question of Ellen’s role in Drood. Given the great lengths Dickens went to to keep his mystery … Continue reading
The Spirit of Dickens yet to come
The Holy Grail in Drood studies is authority – anyone can provide a solution but in theory there is only one correct solution, the one that Dickens took to the grave. With the absence of the author, authority can be … Continue reading
The sincerest form of flattery – Morford’s Collins-Dickens hybrid
Dickens was dead, and Drood was unfinished, with audiences clambering to know the ending while the publishers Chapman and Hall were denying the reader’s quest for closure. Their frank (and ultimately incorrect) statement at the end of the sixth number … Continue reading
The first solution
When not fighting moral injustice, Dickens was having to fight pirates – no, sadly not the “ah-har Jim lad” variety, but literary pirates launching unauthorised versions of his tales while they were first appearing in print. All of Dickens’s novels were published … Continue reading
