I've relied on my superb reader's circle for judgment and ideas, once again composed of Benjamin Cavell, Joseph Gangemi, Cynthia Posillico, and Ian Pearl-who have proven they are impervious to being bothered by borrowers of their genius-and joined this time around by additional brilliant talents Louis Bayard and Eric Dean Bennett. Gabriella Gage provided invaluable assistance in a cross section of complex research, fortifying the project with her persistence, resourcefulness, and patience. Susan and Warren Pearl, Marsha Wiggins, Scott Weinger, and Gustavo Turner were present throughout to encourage both work and rest. And my gratitude to Tobey Pearl, who from the first to the last word helped me through all the hills and valleys of the process.
I bow to more than a century of scholarship on Charles Dickens and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, especially all that has appeared in the Dickensian and Dickens Studies Annual journals, and the writings of Arthur Adrian, Sydney Moss, Fred Kaplan, Don Richard Cox, Robert Patten, and Duane Devries, with the latter three scholars kindly fielding additional questions through private correspondence. I've had the privilege to benefit from the resources of Harvard University Library, the Boston Public Library, the Bostonian Society, the Philadelphia Free Library, and the Dickens Museum in London.
This novel is dedicated to each of my English teachers.
About the author
MATTHEW PEARL is the New York Times best-selling author of The Poe Shadow and The Dante Club, and the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dante's Inferno (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales. Pearl is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School and has taught literature at Harvard and at Emerson College. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
