Charles Dickens died before he finished writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood, but A.N. Wilson points out that the great English novelist left behind other mysteries as well: Why, when Dickens died, did he have not the full £22 from a cashed check in his pockets but only six-odd pounds? Why was Dickens, whose name is entwined with kindness, such a jerk to his wife? The Mystery of Charles Dickens presents six puzzles, and Wilson endeavors to solve them with a fruitful multipronged approach: textual analysis, biographical inquiry and armchair psychoanalysis.
Wilson (Victoria: A Life) is keen on both extolling Dickens's virtues and exploding the misperceptions about him. For one: in the chapter "The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Dickens," Wilson writes that although Dickens was regarded as a voice for the downtrodden, "it is hard to think of any writer who would have been less sympathetic to twenty-first-century ideas of human rights, or of welfare handed out by the state." Wilson supports his provocations with commentary from Dickens scholars and passages from the novelist's work, which, in Wilson's interpretation, is a minefield of autobiography.
While those who have never read Dickens will find no barrier to entry into The Mystery of Charles Dickens, the book will be manna for advanced beginners. Wilson, a biographer and historian who writes in a style unsullied by the modern idiom, gives Dickens fans a sublime opportunity to, in a phrase that Wilson would never use, get their Dickens geek on. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer