![]() ![]() ![]() It's possible Queen Victoria didn't realize the full significance of this gesture Dickens hadn’t shared the full ending of the book with anyone, and as far as historians know, he hadn’t written it down anywhere-an unusual move from the normally meticulous note-taker. Dickens instead offered to share something with her on his terms: the ending of the novel he was currently writing, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. When the queen expressed regret over never making it to one of Dickens’s famous live readings, he told her didn’t do private shows (a statement that wasn’t entirely truthful). Yet Dickens also didn’t exactly go out of his way to make Victoria happy. When Queen Victoria presented him with a copy of Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, he accepted it politely, and did not mention the fact that he had once called it “preposterous” in a letter to a friend, and described those who gave it positive reviews as a “shameful lick-spittle chorus.” The meeting was a little awkward-they both stood the entire time-but any frank opinions the author had about his host or royalty in general he kept to himself. Despite the insults implied with each rejection, the queen persisted-and in March 1870, she finally succeeded in getting the most famous novelist in England into her palace. To him, Queen Victoria was "merely a provincial devotee,” and he didn’t feel compelled to meet this one fan out of many, even if declining a royal invitation was a great violation of social norms at the time. ![]() But for 22 years, Dickens declined.ĭickens wasn’t as enchanted with royalty as some of his peers. She described Oliver Twist as “excessively interesting,” and tried many times during her reign to set up a meeting with the author. The queen devoured literature-she also published a book of her own, Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, in 1868-and like many of her subjects, she enjoyed the works of Charles Dickens. She held the throne from 1837 to 1901, making her the longest-reigning monarch in British history at the time of her death. Queen Victoria was one of the few people who rivaled Dickens’s fame in mid-19th century Britain. To the people who knew Dickens, she seemed like the last person he would confide in. There was, however, one person he came close to sharing his secret with: Queen Victoria. The author took the ending of his final novel to the grave, and to this day, the full plot of The Mystery of Edwin Drood remains mysterious. ![]() Not a communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work." The writer’s vision would never be fully realized, however Dickens died of a stroke on June 9, 1870, at age 58 after publishing the sixth installment of The Mystery of Edwin Drood-which was meant to be serialized in 12 parts. Days later, Drood disappears without warning, and though foul play is suspected, the culprit’s identity is unclear.īefore starting the book, Dickens wrote to his friend and biographer John Forster that he had “a very curious and new idea for my new story. Tensions boil over when the three men spend an evening together, and Landless nearly chucks a wine goblet at Drood. In the tale, Edwin Drood is engaged to be married to Rosa Bud, but his fiancée has attracted romantic attention from two other men in town: his uncle John Jasper and the hot-tempered Neville Landless. The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a whodunit set in Cloisterham, England (the fictionalized version of Dickens’s hometown of Rochester). For his next project, he chose a darker genre to explore. His last three major works- A Tale of Two Cities, a historical novel Great Expectations, a coming-of-age story and Our Mutual Friend, a social satire-had all been critical and commercial successes. The British novelist had concluded his second reading tour of the U.S., where fans stood in line for hours just to be in the same room as the literary superstar. By 1870, Charles Dickens had reached the height of his fame. ![]()
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