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In the cathedral town of Cloisterham, John Jasper, the choirmaster, secretly smokes opium in a London den, and is in love with Rosa Bud, the pupil engaged…
In the cathedral town of Cloisterham, John Jasper, the choirmaster, secretly smokes opium in a London den, and is in love with Rosa Bud, the pupil engaged since childhood to his nephew, Edwin Drood. When twins named Neville and Helena Landless arrive from Ceylon, Neville quarrels with Edwin. On Christmas Eve, after a night of storm, Edwin disappears; his watch is found in the river, and suspicion falls on Neville. Then a white-haired stranger, Dick Datchery, arrives in town and begins to watch Jasper.
Context and significance
Charles Dickens died in June 1870 after completing six of the twelve planned monthly parts, and left no notes on how the mystery would end. Many writers have tried to finish it, and in 1914 a mock trial of Jasper was held in London, with G. K. Chesterton as judge and Bernard Shaw as foreman of the jury. For a mystery Dickens did finish, read Bleak House; for one by his friend Wilkie Collins, read The Moonstone.
About the author
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) worked in a boot-blacking factory as a boy while his father was in a debtors' prison, and poverty and wronged childhood run through his novels, from Oliver Twist to the largely autobiographical David Copperfield.