MA in Dickens Studies

As if Chief Investigator of the Drood Inquiry were not honour enough, I am very pleased to announce my new role as Course Director of the MA by Research in Charles Dickens Studies, which the University of Buckingham will be launching in partnership with the Charles Dickens Museum this October.

Dissecting Drood

Full details of the schedule can be found here: Dissecting Drood Schedule Followers of The Drood Inquiry are warmly invited to attend a forthcoming workshop ‘Dissecting Drood’ on Tuesday 17th November at the Charles Dickens Museum. The workshop is designed to reflect back on what The Drood Inquiry has done and to ask questions of …

The Narrative Significance of Dickens’ Death

Guest post by Camilla Hoel. Camilla completed her PhD on Edwin Drood and its solutions, and has since presented several conference papers, including one at the Drood Conference last year, exploring the way in which we have responded to Drood and its end. Part of the gloriously unfinished “Dickens’ Dream” by Robert William Buss (Dickens Museum). …

New Dickens letter found

Those clever folks over at the Dickens Museum have uncovered a previously unseen letter from Dickens to his lawyer Frederick Ouvry, dated 30 October 1869, detailing the terms of his contract for The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The letter has lain buried among a collection in the basement of the lawyer’s offices and was brought …

Dickens Jnr’s Drood solution

Exciting news – on Friday 10 July 2015 the Dickens Museum is offering an evening of readings from the Drood solution written by Dickens’ son, performed in Dickens’ home.  I’ve spoken here previously about the 1871 novel John Jasper’s Secret by Henry Morford which was, and continues to be, wrongly attributed to Wilkie Collins and …

Drood in the classroom

One of my primary aims in setting up the Drood Inquiry was to encourage new discussion from those who had never read, never heard, of Drood before. So imagine my delight when I received an email this week from Olivia Griffiths, a schoolteacher in Vermont who was inspired by the site to set the mystery …

The solution (so far)

The opening of the special exhibition ‘A Dickens Whodunit: Solving the Mystery of Edwin Drood’ at the Charles Dickens Museum seemed a suitable time to reflect upon the responses received so far on The Drood Inquiry. With that in mind I asked Alys Jones if she would once more take up the pen to create …

A Dickens Whodunnit: Solving the Mystery of Edwin Drood

Next week a special exhibition opens at the Charles Dickens Museum in London all about Drood. I’m very excited about this, not least because I’m co-curating it. ‘A Dickens Whodunnit: Solving the Mystery of Edwin Drood’ is both a chance to celebrate all the discussion of Drood that has occurred so far as well as …

The Death of an Author: Pratchett and Dickens

It was with great sadness I learned of the death of Terry Pratchett yesterday. In the interest of objectivity, let me make it clear that I am very much a fan of his work, and very much in sympathy with the millions of other fans out there who are now feeling the loss of a …

Coming of age (3): Parenthood

So far in this brief look at the process of maturity in Drood, I’ve considered the child in Deputy and the young adults in Rosa and Edwin. However what is most conspicuous about Drood is its absence of parents. Mrs Crisparkle and the Dean are the only natural parents in the text, and even then we only …