The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Continuations

Continuations

Supplying a conclusion to The Mystery of Edwin Drood has occupied writers from the time of Dickens's death to the present day.

The first three attempts to complete the story were undertaken by Americans. The first, by Robert Henry Newell, published under the pen name Orpheus C. Kerr in 1870, was as much a parody as a continuation, transplanting the story to the United States. It is a "burlesque" farce rather than a serious attempt to continue in the spirit of the original story.

The second ending was written by Henry Morford, a New York journalist. He travelled to Rochester with his wife and published the ending serially during his stay in England from 1871–1872. In this ending, Edwin Drood survives Jasper's murder attempt. Datchery is Bazzard in disguise, but Helena disguises herself as well to overhear Jasper's mumbling under the influence of opium. Entitled John Jasper's Secret: Sequel to Charles Dicken's Mystery of Edwin Drood, it was rumored to have been authored by Charles Dickens Jr. and Wilkie Collins, despite Collins' disavowal.

The third attempt was perhaps the most unusual. In 1873, a young Vermont printer, Thomas James, published a version which he claimed had been literally 'ghost-written' by him channelling Dickens' spirit. A sensation was created, with several critics, including Arthur Conan Doyle, a spiritualist himself, praising this version, calling it similar in style to Dickens' work and for several decades the 'James version' of Edwin Drood was common in America. Other Drood scholars disagree. John C. Walters "dismiss with contempt", stating that the work "is self-condemned by its futility, illiteracy, and hideous American mannerisms; the mystery itself becomes a nightmare, and the solution only deepens the obscurity."

Two of the most recent of the posthumous collaborations are The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Leon Garfield (1980) and The Decoding of Edwin Drood (1980) by Charles Forsyte. There was also a humorous continuation by the Italian duo Fruttero & Lucentini entitled The D Case.