The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot
By Andrew Lang
()
About this ebook
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang (March, 31, 1844 – July 20, 1912) was a Scottish writer and literary critic who is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. Lang’s academic interests extended beyond the literary and he was a noted contributor to the fields of anthropology, folklore, psychical research, history, and classic scholarship, as well as the inspiration for the University of St. Andrew’s Andrew Lang Lectures. A prolific author, Lang published more than 100 works during his career, including twelve fairy books, in which he compiled folk and fairy tales from around the world. Lang’s Lilac Fairy and Red Fairy books are credited with influencing J. R. R. Tolkien, who commented on the importance of fairy stories in the modern world in his 1939 Andrew Lang Lecture “On Fairy-Stories.”
Read more from Andrew Lang
500 Classic Fairy Tales You Should Read (Book Center): Cinderella, Rapunzel, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin And The Wonderful Lamp... Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Classic Children's Stories (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Fairy Books of Andrew Lang Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5ARABIAN NIGHTS: Andrew Lang's 1001 Nights & R. L. Stevenson's New Arabian Nights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fairy Books of All Colours - Complete Series: Books 1-12 (Illustrated Edition): 400+ Tales in One Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Blue Poetry Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHistory of English Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Illustrated Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights (Andrew Lang) + New Arabian Nights (R. L. Stevenson) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeauty and the Beast – All Four Versions Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Arabian Nights: One Thousand and One Nights: New Revised Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwelve Color Fairy Books Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFolklore and Mythology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5King Arthur: Tales from the Round Table Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Story of Joan of Arc Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFables and Fairy Tales: Aesop's Fables, Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and The Blue Fairy Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTales of Troy and Greece Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Christmas Carols & Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMyth, Ritual, and Religion: Volume One Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5John Knox and the Reformation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot
Related ebooks
The Puzzel Of Dickenss Lost Plot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Puzzle Of Dicken's Last Plot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAudrey Craven: 'She prepared to hurl herself into the breach'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJohnny Ludlow - Third Series: 'We never know the full value of a thing until we lose it'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMerkland or Self Sacrifice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Admirer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHorn-Horn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Dangerous Beauty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Miss Esperance and Mr Wycherly Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Frozen Deep by Wilkie Collins - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDelphi Collected Works of May Sinclair (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Face Down Collection Three: Face Down Mysteries, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWonderful London Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDemon: Book Two Of The Carmody Chronicles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShattered Dreams - (Behind Closed Doors - Book 1) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Track: 'Oh, my ways are strange ways and new ways and old ways'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Tale of Two Lovers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Judith Wynne Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Deep Dark Call Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCertain People: short story classics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tide King Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lady's Deception Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tangled in Time 2: The Burning Queen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Carmilla Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Absentee Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRilla of Ingleside Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMerkland or, Self Sacrifice: "There is nothing so costly as bargains" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeautiful Freaks: Beautiful Freaks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Classics For You
The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Women (Seasons Edition -- Winter) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn French! Apprends l'Anglais! THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: In French and English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights (with an Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Count of Monte-Cristo English and French Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jungle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm: A Fairy Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sense and Sensibility (Centaur Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Titus Groan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot - Andrew Lang
The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot
Andrew Lang
.
THE STORY--DRAMATIS PERSONAE
For the discovery of Dickens's secret in Edwin Drood it is necessary to obtain a clear view of the characters in the tale, and of their relations to each other.
About the middle of the nineteenth century there lived in Cloisterham, a cathedral city sketched from Rochester, a young University man, Mr. Bud, who had a friend Mr. Drood, one of a firm of engineers--somewhere. They were fast friends and old college companions.
Both married young. Mr. Bud wedded a lady unnamed, by whom he was the father of one child, a daughter, Rosa Bud. Mr. Drood, whose wife's maiden name was Jasper, had one son, Edwin Drood. Mrs. Bud was drowned in a boating accident, when her daughter, Rosa, was a child. Mr. Drood, already a widower, and the bereaved Mr. Bud betrothed
the two children, Rosa and Edwin, and then expired, when the orphans were about seven and eleven years old. The guardian of Rosa was a lawyer, Mr. Grewgious, who had been in love with her mother. To Grewgious Mr. Bud entrusted his wife's engagement ring, rubies and diamonds, which Grewgious was to hand over to Edwin Drood, if, when he attained his majority, he and Rosa decided to marry.
Grewgious was apparently legal agent for Edwin, while Edwin's maternal uncle, John Jasper (aged about sixteen when the male parents died), was Edwin's trustee,
as well as his uncle and devoted friend. Rosa's little fortune was an annuity producing 250 pounds a-year: Edwin succeeded to his father's share in an engineering firm.
When the story opens, Edwin is nearly twenty-one, and is about to proceed to Egypt, as an engineer. Rosa, at school in Cloisterham, is about seventeen; John Jasper is twenty-six. He is conductor of the Choir of the Cathedral, a lay precentor;
he is very dark, with thick black whiskers, and, for a number of years, has been a victim to the habit of opium smoking. He began very early. He takes this drug both in his lodgings, over the gate of the Cathedral, and in a den in East London, kept by a woman nicknamed The Princess Puffer.
This hag, we learn, has been a determined drunkard,--I drank heaven's-hard,
--for sixteen years BEFORE she took to opium. If she has been dealing in opium for ten years (the exact period is not stated), she has been very disreputable for twenty-six years, that is ever since John Jasper's birth. Mr. Cuming Walters suggests that she is the mother of John Jasper, and, therefore, maternal grandmother of Edwin Drood. She detests her client, Jasper, and plays the spy on his movements, for reasons unexplained.
Jasper is secretly in love with Rosa, the fiancee of his nephew, and his own pupil in the musical art. He makes her aware of his passion, silently, and she fears and detests him, but keeps these emotions private. She is a saucy school-girl, and she and Edwin are on uncomfortable terms: she does not love him, while he perhaps does love her, but is annoyed by her manner, and by the gossip about their betrothal. The bloom is off the plum
of their prearranged loves, he says to his friend, uncle, and confidant, Jasper, whose own concealed passion for Rosa is of a ferocious and homicidal character. Rosa is aware of this fact; a glaze comes over his eyes,
sometimes, she says, and he seems to wander away into a frightful sort of dream, in which he threatens most . . .
The man appears to have these frightful dreams even when he is not under opium.
OPENING OF THE TALE
The tale opens abruptly with an opium-bred vision of the tower of Cloisterham Cathedral, beheld by Jasper as he awakens in the den of the Princess Puffer, between a Chinaman, a Lascar, and the hag