Abetting "Literary Sins": The Dickensian and the Drood Phenomenon

Abstract:This essay examines why the years between 1905 and 1915 generated a massive amount of commentary concerning Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Building on Don Richard Cox's influential bibliography of the novel's reception, I suggest that the Dickens Fellowship's journal, the Dickensian, actively cultivated a new audience of Dickens readers through its careful curation of Droodiana. By pursuing inclusive policies that attracted professionals, lay readers, and academics alike, the Dickensian helped resuscitate a novel that might otherwise have been forgotten. Such an approach might be mimicked today, I argue, to help generate canons of criticism for lost Victorian works.