Product Description

Edwin Drood is contracted to marry Orphan Rosa, but they break the engagement off-and soon afterwards Edwin disappears. Is it murder? And is his jealous uncle-a sinister choirmaster with a double life and designs on Rosa-the killer? Dickens died before completing the story, leaving the mystery unsolved and encouraging successive generations of readers to turn detective. In addition to its tantalizing crime, the novel also offers a characteristically Dickensian mix of the fantastical world of the imagination and a vibrantly journalistic depiction of gritty reality.

This edition features a new critical introduction that assesses the evidence to show whether the mystery can truly be solved, as well as a chronology, illustrations, appendixes (including one on opium use in the nineteenth century).

Edited with an introduction and notes by David Paroissien.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16078 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-28
• Released on: 2002-05-28
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From AudioFile
[Editor's Note--The following is a combined review with DAVID COPPERFIELD, GHOST STORIES, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, HARD TIMES, MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT, NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, OLIVER TWIST, OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, THE PICKWICK PAPERS, and A TALE OF TWO CITIES.]--New Millennium presents the distinguished Academy Award winner Paul Scofield interpreting abridgments of the novels and stories of Charles Dickens. These are excellent readings, sonorous and compelling. However, they lack the verve and character of the old Victorian qualities that have been so wonderfully captured on cassette by Martin Jarvis and Miriam Margolyes, among others. And while few authors benefit more from pruning than the paid-by-the-word Dickens, some of these cuttings are far too drastic. In addition, hurried post-production is evident in numerous audible edits, frequent mouth noises, and occasional overlapping of announcer and narrator. Y.R. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Download Description
The main issue in the novel is the disappearance of Edwin Drood and the suspicion that he has been murdered. But as intriguing as this central plot are the startling innovations in Dicken's work and the troubled elements lurking within the novel: a dark opium underworld, the uneasy and violent fantasies of its inhabitants, the disquieting presence of old 'Princess Puffer', of the quiet cathedral town of Cloisterham from which people have to escape in order to save themselves--and, at the centre, the menacing figure of Jasper.

From the Publisher
This book is in Electronic Paperback Format. If you view this book on any of the computer systems below, it will look like a book. Simple to run, no program to install. Just put the CD in your CDROM drive and start reading. The simple easy to use interface is child tested at pre-school levels.

Windows 3.11, Windows/95, Windows/98, OS/2 and MacIntosh and Linux with Windows Emulation.

Includes Quiet Vision's Dynamic Index. the abilty to build a index for any set of characters or words.

Customer Reviews

Readers Left Stranded: Uninspired and Unfinished.
As a suggestion, avoid the Penguin Popular Classics with the plain green covers (I bought two). They fall apart and do not stand up to a read, especially books over 500 pages - and they have no illustrations. The Regular Penguin Classics with the illustration on the front are excellent, and have maps, illustrations, and extensive analysis - sometimes 100 pages. The Wordsworth Classics are not as good.

I finished Edwin Drood by Dickens and was left scratching my head and wondering why this book is so terrible. After all it is written by Dickens. How can it be so bad?

Dickens has many works and this is down at the bottom of the pile. That is not just my opinion or crazy idea. Currently it ranks below rank #120 for Dickens books, over 110 spots below, for example, Oliver Twist and collections of short stories. That is, there are 120 Dickens novels, DVDs, and collections of stories ahead of it.

Edwin Drood is different. It was written about five years after all the others. It is his last novel. All the sympathetic children are missing here and the story is unfinished, maybe only half written. It is a dark novel in both plot and setting. The characters are mostly around 20 to 30 years in age and relatively lifeless or not fully developed since the novel is half finished. The children - made famous in Dickens novels - are replaced by two drug addicts. Even the villain John Jasper lacks any attraction, nor is he as interesting as other famous Dickens villains such as Uriah Heap in David Copperfield.

Edwin Drood and his fiancée, Rosa Bud, make rather weak appearances, and seem two dimensional. The story, which is set near a large cathedral, seems very gray and somber. The ending - as such as it is - is abrupt and ends in the middle of a page with everything left hanging - and too many questions are simply left unresolved and up in the air.

So, this is an unfinished story and not a very attractive story by comparison to Great Expectations or David Copperfield, or any of the great novels by Dickens. Clearly, the writing is a good in Edwin Drood - since it is Dickens doing the writing - but you need characters and a plot to make it interesting, and most of that is missing.

This is a slow and a mostly dreadful read.

A true mystery
This is a deep and sordid tale, a tale of love and hate and indifference, of drugs and desire and (just possibly) murder. Edwin Drood feels trapped in a betrothal that was engineered by his dead father. Drood's uncle, John Jaspar, secretly loves Drood's fianc?e, Rosa Bud. The newly arrived Neville Landless has also fallen in love with Rosa, and hates Edwin for his indifference to her. And when Edwin disappears under strange and suspicious circumstances, it begins to look like murder. But, there is more here than meets the eye. Who has done what and why? It's a mystery.

And, to make matter worse, it will remain a mystery! This book was Charles Dickens' (1812-1870) last novel, and the great author died when the book was still only half finished. It has been the source of a great deal of speculation, and even a movie and a musical comedy. (Believe it or not!)

So, if you are a fan of mysteries, and want to read one that is truly a mystery - a you-decide-who-did-it - then this is the book for you. It is a very interesting read, and no doubt would have been considered another great Dickens book, if it had been finished. But, the sad fact is that it wasn't. So, if you are intrigued with the book, as I was, then be prepared to be disappointed with the lack of ending.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, and am glad I read it. But, without an ending, there is no way that I can give this book 5 stars. So, let me just say that this is a good book, and I give it a guarded recommendation.

"I have been taking opium for a pain, an agony, that sometimes overcomes me."
Set in Cloisterham, a cathedral town, Dickens's final novel, unfinished, introduces two elements unusual for Dickens--opium-eating and the church. In the opening scene, John Jasper, music teacher and soloist in the cathedral choir, awakens from an opium trance in a flat with two other semi-conscious men and their supplier, an old woman named Puffer, and then hurries off to daily vespers.

Jasper, aged twenty-six, is the uncle and guardian of Edwin Drood, only a few years younger. Drood has been the fiancé of Rosa Bud for most of his life, an arrangement made by his and Rosa's deceased fathers to honor their friendship, and the wedding is expected within the year. Jasper, Rosa's music teacher, is secretly in love with her, though she finds him repellent.

When two orphans, Helena and Neville Landless, arrive in Cloisterham, Helena and Rosa become friends, and Neville finds himself strongly attracted to the lovely Rosa. Ultimately, the hot-tempered Neville and Drood have a terrible argument in which Neville threatens Drood before leaving town on a walking trip. Drood vanishes the same day. Apprehended on his trip, Neville is questioned about Drood's disappearance, and Jasper accuses him of murder.

Tightly organized to this point, the novel shows Jasper himself to be a prime suspect, someone who could have engineered the evidence against Neville, but Dickens unexpectedly introduces some new characters at this point--the mysterious Dick Datchery and Tartar, an old friend of Rev. Mr. Crisparkle, minor canon at the cathedral. Puffer, the opium woman, is reintroduced and appears set to play a greater role, since she solicits information from the semi-conscious Jasper and secretly follows him. This is the halfway point in the projected novel, and Dickens clearly planned to develop these new (or reintroduced) characters to deepen the mystery.

More modern in many ways than his previous novels, the characters here are not simple stereotypes--some are good people who have real flaws and make mistakes. Dickens's tying of Jasper to the church choir, where he was a soloist, suggests some examination of the theme of hypocrisy, in which the good Mr. Crisparkle would be Jasper's antithesis. The opium scenes, vividly drawn, carry the unusual suggestion that opium leads to a kind of intoxication similar to that of alcohol, and Dicken does not use these scenes to offer dire warnings about the drug--at least at this point. Especially intriguing because it is unfinished, this novel continues to fascinate mystery lovers and literary scholars more than a century after its first publication. n Mary Whipple