Based on internal evidence in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Percy Garden in 1920 formulated what appeared to be a convincing argument that Edwin Drood disappeared early in the morning of Sunday, December 25, 1842, and that therefore the action of the story took place in 1842-1843. But then in 1944 T. W. Hill challenged Garden's theory by claiming that the assorted evidence in the half-finished novel could in fact yield a wide variety of dates, and that Dickens did not have any particular year in mind as his starting point. My purpose here is to rebut Hill's contention and prove that Garden was right after all. |