Crowdsourcing Experiment to Solve the Mystery of Edwin Drood

January 26, 2015 By IdeaConnection

Dickens_Gurney_headCould crowdsourcing solve one of the world’s biggest literary mysteries?  Many Charles Dickens fans are certainly pinning their hopes on the crowd to discover what actually happened to Edwin Drood.

When the author of such classics as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol died, he was midway through The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  With the novel laying unfished, its ending was therefore unknown. But now an innovative website going by the name of the Drood Inquiry hopes to determine the location and fate of the story’s young protagonist.

The website was set up by Dr Pete Orford from Buckingham University and is inviting the crowd to finish the tale.  The story is a murder mystery in which the missing Drood is supposedly killed by his uncle.  But this is far from established.

Interactive Investigation

Visitors to the website can take part in an interactive investigation.  They can review numerous theories about how the story ends, read about the big questions that remain to be answered and then make a decision and vote for the conclusion they think is the right one.  Additional help is supplied with witness statements, including Charles Dickens Junior’s account of a conversation with his father.

The website also features character profiles and a section of clues and red herrings. Visitors can also keep up to date with popular votes on such issues as whether Edwin is dead or alive and who killed or tried to kill him.

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Dividing Opinion

The crowdsourcing exercise has divided Dickens fans, with some saying it is a good idea, while others comment that although an interesting experiment, a completed novel based on the site will lack a Dickensian flavor.


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