First published by Rebecca Nesvet on UWGB Commons website

In the summer of 1870, Charles Dickens was exhausted by work and travel and traumatized by the Staplehurst railway accident, which he survived but ten others did not. He died on June 9, leaving unfinished his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Ever since, readers have struggled to figure out how the novel would have ended, and the solutions to its various plot mysteries. Was Edwin Drood murdered, and if so, by whom? Who is the mysterious ‘Dick Datchery’ — a man (or woman?) — clearly in disguise? What is the destiny of the star-crossed nonlovers Drood and Rosa Bud, and the Sri Lankan (‘Ceylonese’) siblings known in England as Neville and Helena Landless? What would the ending have said about Dickens’s final views on the novel’s major themes: the passage of time and regimes, imperialism and colonialism, ‘progress’ and envy, and more?

Several UWGB students taking English 436: Major Authors: Dickens have ‘found’ some lost fragments that look like endings to Edwin Drood. To see the novel concluded, choose your adventure from these possibilities.

1. Abigail Frye: Edwin Drood: Creative Ending
2. Alex Crary: Ruminations of a Kinslayer
3. Ethan Robb: Ending Drood
4. Jacob Chamberlain: Jasper, the Unholy Ghost of Cloisterham
5. James Jones: Mystery's Last Page
6. Kelsey Langlitz: The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Solved At Last
7. Keshena Hanson: The Mystery of Edwin Drood – Solved! (Maybe)
8. Michaela Brickner: Greed and Selfishness
9. Sean Gatton: The Return of Edwin Drood