by Charles Dickens, concluded by Leion Garfield, with an introduction by Edward Blishen
In 1870, Charles Dickens began writing a murder mystery to be called The Mystery of Edwin Drood. As with so many of his earlier books, he wrote it in installments, to be published monthly. He wrote six installments…and then suddenly died, leaving the book only halfway finished, and the mystery unsolved. Worse still, he left no useful hints behind to suggest how he thought the story should end. Since then, figuring out “who dun it” has been one of the great games of English literature, attracting everybody from amateur sleuths to writers like George Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton. But actually finishing the book? For publication? That requires not just solving the crime but doing it like Dickens. This is award-winning historical fiction writer Leon Garfield’s attempt, which won the praise of fellow “completist” Angus Wilson in the New York Times: ““Let me say that [this book has] the good sense to accept the clues offered us by Dickens's friends and illustrators…. I must declare that Mr. Garfield's audacity in presenting his version of the last half of the novel in a pastiche of Dickens, following on directly from the authentic text of the first half, pays off wonderfully. The language is nearly always believable as being that of Dickens himself.”

Published in 1980 by Pantheon, New York
ISBN: 0394519183
Edition: First American Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very good
Dust Jacket included. Condition of Dust Jacket:
Comments: Library of Congress description: Description: xv, 327 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Seller Inventory #: 0000155