The "Drood" Remains Revisited: The Monthly Plans (Part One)

Ordinarily, a writer's notes are of little interest to most readers, but Dickens's notes for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, so often reprinted, are fascinating, not only to those who have read the book but even to those who haven't and perhaps never will. [...]they are fascinating at first sight. First sign of Little Dorrit's father failing and breaking down. [...]it is, and was meant to be, a composition in itself, an exhibit, a show-piece, designed to beguile the reader and amuse the author. In almost all editions of Drood, "The Dawn Again" is chapter 23; it being preceded by "A Recognition," an improvised chapter consisting mostly of wordage the author had deleted from the fifth number, but which his literary executor John Forster restored after his death. 4 This page is missing, most probably because it was a blank sheet, omitted either by Forster or by his widow, when she passed on her husband's papers to the V & A Museum. 5 It is not often recognized that what we have on hand is exactly one half of the projected book: five and three-quarter numbers out of eleven and a half.