Editor's Foreword

In the literary landscape of the nineteenth century, few enigmas have remained as alive as that of Charles Dickens's unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The author's sudden death in 1870 interrupted the narrative thread and, paradoxically, opened the way to a succession of interpretations and attempted continuations that continues to this day. Critical studies, debates within the Dickens Fellowship, as well as various efforts to complete the novel, have shown that the absence of an ending is not merely a biographical accident, but a catalyst for collective imagination.

The book the reader now holds - The Mystery of Edwin Drood. A Farce with a Eucatastrophic Ending, written by Radu I. Comsuta - belongs to this tradition, but does so with a distinctive tone and intention. It is neither a critical edition nor a straightforward literary reconstruction, but a hybrid text, positioned between essay, parody, and pastiche. The author combines rigorous comparative analysis of Dickensian characters with an imaginative exercise, proposing a conclusion that aims to be both plausible and surprising.

To grasp the uniqueness of this approach, it is necessary to clarify the term 'eucatastrophe'. It was coined by J. R. R. Tolkien, who described it as 'the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears' - a moment that is unexpected yet deeply prepared within the narrative. If 'catastrophe' signals irreversible collapse, 'eucatastrophe' marks the sudden advent of grace. Applied to Dickens's unfinished novel, the concept becomes a hermeneutic key: where criticism has long been trapped in unanswered questions - Is Edwin dead or alive? Who is truly guilty? How is the tension between Jasper and Neville to be resolved? - Radu I. Comsuta ventures an unexpected solution, yet one that remains faithful to the Dickensian universe.

One telling example is the treatment of John Jasper. In most critical tradition, Jasper has been seen almost unanimously as the likely murderer of Edwin. Comsuta, however, through close reading and analogies with other Dickensian figures, sketches another possibility: not the inevitable villain, but a man ensnared in his own weakness, capable of a final reversal. What if' the text suggests, 'Jasper were granted the chance of a revelation, of a metanoia that could transform the plot into a moral and spiritual lesson?' This shift of perspective is what the author terms 'a farce with a eucatastrophic ending': parodying the clichés of detective fiction while introducing the possibility of transfiguration.

Equally significant is the role given to Neville Landless. Often regarded as either rival or convenient scapegoat, here Neville becomes the pivot of a 'mirror game': the reader is invited to compare his trajectory with that of other young men in Dickens's work - Pip from Great Expectations, or Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities. From such analogies emerges the hypothesis that Neville may serve not only as witness but as a force for redemption.

Eucatastrophe, in this sense, is born from Dickens's own tendency to offer his characters a 'second chance.' A more meta-literary example is the reconstruction of Edwin's disappearance. Instead of conventional narration, Comsuta stages an ironic mise en abyme: the story fractures, the authorial voice intrudes, and the reader becomes aware of the very artificiality of the game. Yet farce here does not end in triviality: it prepares the ground for the eucatastrophic turn, where the proposed resolution appears both surprising and meaningful.

The value of this work lies not simply in offering 'another ending' to The Mystery of Edwin Drood, but in demonstrating how fertile critical imagination can be when placed in dialogue with tradition. The reader will discover not only the erudition of a Dickens enthusiast, but the humour of a parodist and the empathy of an interpreter who seeks not to close the novel with a verdict, but to open it towards a luminous possibility.

From this angle, the book proves valuable both for Dickensian studies and for the wider public, who will see how an unfinished text may generate an infinity of possible solutions. More than this, it shows that literature is not merely a museum piece, but a living field where contemporary readers and writers may converse with the classics.

As publisher, I commend this book not only as an exercise in 'what if?,' but as a demonstration that critical imagination can enrich cultural heritage. If Dickens left a missing link in the chain of his novel, Radu I. Comsuta demonstrates that it can be completed not by mere speculation, but by a eucatastrophe that lends meaning to the whole.

Vasile Poenaru
Editor

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Motto:

'Our affections, however laudable, in this transitory world, should never master us; we should guide them, guide them.'
(The Dean's words)

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Introduction

The death of the great nineteenth-century novelist, occurring while he was still at work on his final book, set in motion a long race to discover the ending that Dickens himself might have wished for. That race has lasted for more than a century and a half, right up to our own day, and we cannot say that there is yet a clear winner – nor is it likely there ever will be. Still, I believe that through rigorous selection we may at least draw near to a version that is reasonably fitting. Though no conclusion has been found upon which all readers might agree, one certainty is widely shared: the principal figure of the novel, Edwin Drood, is not dead. This conviction I share myself.

The vicissitudes of the endeavour to supply a suitable ending are worth noting. For those who wish to follow the long journey of the various attempts - some more successful than others – I would recommend a work of synthesis written in an engaging, interactive manner for the reader: Pete Orford's The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Charles Dickens' Unfinished Novel and Our Endless Attempts to End It. Orford is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Course Director for the MA by Research in Charles Dickens Studies.

According to the information given in the aforementioned book, in the first years after Dickens's death on 9 June 1870, there was a remarkable effervescence, so much so that various writers attempted their own versions of an ending. One of the most striking works in terms of sheer bulk – three volumes amounting to a thousand pages - was that of Gillian Vase (the pseudonym of Elizabeth Newton), published in 1878 under the title A Great Mystery Solved. Another was Sarah Elizabeth Downs's The Welfleet Mystery (An Outgrowth of Dickens's Last Work).

Of these two early ventures Pete Orford remarked that they were rather 'a celebration or an exploitation of Dickens's text, rather than an attempt to show his intended solution' (Orford, 2018, p. 28).

A curious episode was the introduction of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes in several newspaper articles, where he was set to work on unravelling the mystery of Dickens's unfinished novel, and thereby on supplying a proper ending. In addition to séances in which the author's spirit was summoned to deliver the long-awaited conclusion - information which, needless to say, was not taken seriously, otherwise we should by now have possessed a universally accepted ending - there was also the intriguing initiative of the Dickens Fellowship

Founded in 1902, it established a literary tribunal in which, during the trial of Edwin Drood's disappearance, the character Jasper was arraigned on a charge of murder.

Although organised after the model of a real court of law, the characters in the book were represented by writers well known at the time, and the place of judge was taken by the critic and essayist G. K. Chesterton. This trial was more a literary debate than a court case in the full sense. By contrast, in America there were genuine court proceedings, with real magistrates, conducted on the basis of the information supplied in the novel; yet no clear verdict was ever reached, owing to insufficient evidence. We leave it to those who are interested to read Pete Orford's book, and we shall merely note here the methods of inquiry employed by those who sought to discover the proper ending. These might be classed as detective, academic, detective-academic, or else as parody of an undertaking so difficult to bring to completion.

The present work, which also proposes to supply a possible ending, adopts the detective-academic method. The purely detective method is not enough - though it is highly practical in real life - because we are here in the fanciful realm of fiction, where other rules apply. Any writer who seeks to produce a successful book capable of impressing the public uses in the construction of the plot details that appear to be real, but which, in the denouement, will be overturned by other events and characters introduced later in the novel, so as to provide a wholly unexpected conclusion.

It follows, then, that Dickens, in a novel with the air of a detective thriller, scattered a host of 'red herrings' - which in the literary world signifies false clues intended to divert the reader's attention from the true facts, facts that are to be revealed only at the end through an unexpected reversal. Besides this, as was customary in that age, novels were published in serial instalments. Depending upon the reaction and expectations of his public, Dickens could at any moment alter the outcome in order to deliver the effect of surprise.

And since I have already mentioned G. K. Chesterton, let us begin with him.

In his 1906 study Chesterton noted something very striking about Dickens. According to his observations, certain of Dickens's characters do not remain confined to the novels in which they first appear; one has the impression of meeting them again in later works, as though they had stepped out of their own books and gone strolling into others.

Nor is there any reason why these superb creatures, as a general rule, should be in one novel any more than another. There is no reason why Sam Weller, in the course of his wanderings, should not wander into 'Nicholas Nickleby.' There is no reason why Major Bagstock, in his brisk way, should not walk straight out of 'Dombey and Son; and straight into 'Martin Chuzzlewit.' (Chesterton, 1911, pp. 81-82)

Firstly, Miss Havisham in Great Expectations told her relatives that on the day of her death she would be laid out upon the very wedding table on which the bride's cake and all the other preparations for the marriage had once been set. An accident causes Miss Havisham to suffer severe burns, after which she is wrapped in the tablecloth and placed upon that very table of which she had spoken, and there, a few days later, she breathes her last.

Secondly, Smike, the tragic hero of Nicholas Nickleby, feels a dreadful terror of a certain spot in his childhood home. It is precisely the place where his biological father, Ralph Nickleby, will hang himself from a beam.

Thirdly, Gashford, secretary to Lord George Gordon, tells his master one morning that he had dreamt of him as a Jew with a long beard. At the end of his life, after Lord George has been excommunicated from the Protestant Church, he does indeed convert to Judaism.

Lastly, Mr Micawber, a man of so many talents, could never manage to establish himself in society or to secure a livelihood. His wife was constantly aggrieved that English society failed to appreciate her husband's brilliance and resources. At last, her expectations are fulfilled: he makes a fortune, not in England but in distant Australia, where he is elected mayor of a town of the English Crown, and becomes a respected civic leader.

These points are a conditio sine qua non without which we cannot hope to arrive at the most fitting ending, if we are to take this task seriously. The discovery of a fortunate conclusion depends upon finding the most acceptable answers to the points I shall enumerate below. I have chosen only those which I deemed essential. And, of course, these points must not contradict other parts of the novel, but must blend harmoniously with the rest.

1. Questions:

• What is the source of the mysterious, 'unintelligible' word uttered by Jasper in the first chapter, while under the influence of opium in Mrs Puffer's house? What relevance does it bear in the novel, especially since Puffer alludes to it again in the final chapter, The Dawn Again?

• What, precisely, was Puffer searching for in Cloisterham on the day of Edwin's disappearance, when she confides to Edwin that she is 'looking for a needle in a haystack'? From her reply, it might refer either to a person or to a valuable object.

• What was the meaning of Puffer's threatening words to Jasper: 'I will not miss you twice'?

• What is to become of the engagement ring which Mr Grewgious, custodian of Miss Rosa Bud, gives to Edwin when he resolves to propose to her?

• What significance lies in the marks which Mr Datchery scratches upon the door of Mrs Tope's cupboard? 

• How is it that Deputy, practically a deserted street-child, knows full well who Puffer is and what dark dealings she is engaged in? Is there a particular relationship between Deputy and Puffer? If so, what?

• Who was the woman with the rope around her neck, running with a child in her arms, as seen in one of Mr Durdles's visions? This vision is precisely the sort of Dickensian premonition which must, in due course, come to pass.

2. Predictions:

• Edwin Drood pays Rosa Bud a private visit and they have a brief meeting on the occasion of her name-day. In a friendly conversation, connected with his planned journey to Egypt, Rosa chides Edwin in schoolgirl fashion, warning him that surely he does not mean to bury himself in the Egyptian pyramids.

• Mr Crisparkle cautions Neville in Chapter X, after the quarrel with Edwin in Jasper's house, that the day will come when he and Edwin will clasp hands in friendship. This, then, must come to pass in the ending.

• Again Mr Crisparkle, in the same chapter, after his meeting with Neville and Helena, as he makes his way in the dark towards the Cathedral, gives voice to his thoughts, one of which is that he will be asked to marry Edwin and Rosa, and he longs for this with all his heart. This, therefore, must be pursued to fulfilment. The wish of Mr Crisparkle is, in truth, the wish of Dickens himself.