otwith­stand­ing the lapse of time since Dick­ens' death, and the many painstak­ing ef­forts made to solve the mysteri­ous plot of his great un­fin­ished work, it will be gen­er­al­ly ad­mit­ted that no very happy elu­ci­da­tion of that al­ways fas­ci­nat­ing prob­lem has hith­er­to been of­fered to the pub­lic. It now re­mains to be seen whether the at­tempt set forth in the fol­low­ing pages shall be con­signed to obliv­ion as un­satisfactory with its many pre­de­ces­sors, or shall be so for­tu­nate as to carry off, by gen­er­al con­sent, the palm of vic­to­ry, as being the true so­lu­tion at last.

The the­o­ry ad­vanced some years ago—that Edwin Drood was ac­tu­al­ly killed by Jasper, and that Datch­ery is none other than He­le­na Land­less in ro­bust dis­guise, must ap­pear to every sym­pa­thet­ic stu­dent of Dick­ens as unten­able as it is un plea sing. The great mas­ter never fails of chival­rous del­i­ca­cy in his treat­ment of beau­ti­ful and interest­ing young wom­an­hood, but he must be ad­mit­ted to have fall­en very far below his or­di­nary level in this re­spect if the state­ly He­le­na be in­deed one with the "idle dog" and "sin­gle buffer" who dis­pos­es of a pint of sher­ry for his din­ner, and is pre­sent­ed to us " but­toned up in a tight­ish blue surtout, with a buff waist­coat and grey trousers." No: Datch­ery is dis­tinct­ly un­com­pro­mis­ing­ly mas­cu­line. What­ev­er else he may be hid­ing or as­sum­ing there is no mas­quer­ade of sex.

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