Victorian Popular Fiction Association

Call for Papers: The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Solutions and Resolutions

Senate House, London, 20th September 2014


Charles Dickens’s last novel, unfinished as it is, has become a call to 
arms to a legion of fans, academics and authors to solve the mystery and 
complete the uncompleted. In the early years after Dickens’s death, 
passionate discussions of Drood formed the vast bulk of criticism of his 
works, while later scholars have looked back upon this formative period 
with a mixture of bemusement and embarrassment. In 2014 The Drood 
Inquiry will investigate and celebrate the many weird and wonderful 
responses to Dickens’s story, exploring the ways in which these 
solutions reflect upon the authors’ attitudes to Dickens and his legacy, 
and how Dickens’s story and characters exist both within the boundaries 
of the original text and without in the numerous spin-offs that have 
arisen.

This one-day conference commemorating the launch of The Drood Inquiry 
will play upon some of those themes as well as allowing the opportunity 
to consider Edwin Drood afresh, not purely as a puzzle to be solved but 
as a work of literature to be analysed and celebrated in its own right. 
We welcome proposals for 20 minute papers which will explore the themes 
of the book or the insights its subsequent treatment can provide on 
Dickens’s reputation, as well of course as any discussion of theories on 
how the story ends!

Topics could include, but are not restricted to:

Characters, themes and topography of Edwin Drood
The legacy and afterlife of Dickens and Drood
Dickens in 1870
Incomplete stories of the nineteenth century
Victorian fan-fiction and neo-Victorianism
Early detective fiction and the mystery genre
Clues and red herrings
Adaptations of Drood for stage and screen
Dickens and the fanatics
Ownership and authorship
The role of the ending in plot and structure

Proposals (up to 500 words) and a brief biographical note should be sent 
by 31 May 2014 to [log in to unmask] For further details and 
updates you can follow us on Twitter @Drood_Inquiry or visit 
http://www.droodinquiry.com/index.php
-- 
Joanne Ella Parsons
PhD Candidate
Bath Spa University

Social Media and Website Officer
Feminist and Women's Studies Association
www.FWSAblog.org.uk

Twitter: @joparsons
www.joanneparsons.co.uk
www.damagingthebody.org