The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and readers have often speculated how it might have ended. The novel is named after Edwin Drood, one of the characters, but it mostly tells the story of his uncle, a choirmaster named John Jasper, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud is Drood's fiancée, and has also caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless, who comes from Ceylon with his twin sister, Helena, who immediately makes an enemy of Drood. It is hinted strongly that Jasper is the murderer of Drood, who is missing at the end of the extant text, but it is not known whether Dickens had a surprise in mind.
The story is set in Cloisterham, a lightly fictionalised Rochester, and feelingly evokes the atmosphere of the town as much as its streets and buildings.
Summary
The novel begins as a man, who we later learn is John Jasper, leaves a London opium den. The next evening, Edwin Drood visits Jasper, his uncle, who is the choirmaster at Cloisterham Cathedral. Edwin confides that he has misgivings about his betrothal to Rosa Bud. The next day, Edwin visits Rosa at the Nuns’ House, the boarding school where she lives. They quarrel good-naturedly, which they apparently do frequently during his visits. Meanwhile, having an interest in the cathedral cemetery, Jasper seeks the company of Durdles, a man who knows more about the cemetery than anyone else...
(From Wikipedia, description text under GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL))
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