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.

>>> Читать дальше [Read more]