The Last Dickens
Matthew Pearl, 2009
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812978025
Summary
In his most enthralling novel yet, the critically acclaimed author Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary history’s greatest mysteries. The Last Dickens is a tale filled with the dazzling twists and turns, the unerring period details, and the meticulous research that thrilled readers of the bestsellers The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow.
Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await the arrival of Dickens’s unfinished novel. But when Daniel’s body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that he hopes will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer.
Danger and intrigue abound on the journey to England, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel’s older sister, to assist him. As they attempt to uncover Dickens’s final mystery, Osgood and Rebecca find themselves racing the clock through a dangerous web of literary lions and drug dealers, sadistic thugs and blue bloods, and competing members of Dickens’s inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickens’s lost ending is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 2, 1976
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A. Harvard University; Yale Law School
• Currently—lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Matthew Pearl is the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Dickens, The Dante Club, and The Poe Shadow, and is the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dante’s Inferno (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales. The Dante Club has been published in more than thirty languages and forty countries around the world.
Pearl is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School and has taught literature at Harvard and at Emerson College. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)
More
Matthew Pearl's novels achieve the seemingly unachievable. They manage to be both informative and entertaining, utilizing historically accurate details about some very famous literary figures to fashion fictional thrillers that rival the works of Pearl's idols. While Pearl's work is indeed ambitious, he has the credentials to tackle such challenging projects that place immortals like Dante Alighieri, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Alan Poe in the middle of mysteries of his own creation.
In 1997, Pearl graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude in English and American literature. He went on to teach literature and creative writing at both Harvard and Emerson College. Pearl's impressive background in literature and research provided him with the necessary tools for making history come alive in a most unique way. He is also bolstered by a genuine fascination with the theme of literary stardom. "I am very interested by literary celebrity, and both Dante and Poe experienced it in some degree," Pearl explained to litkicks.com. "Or, in Poe's case, he aimed for literary celebrity and never quite achieved it.... Longfellow was more genuinely a celebrity. People would stop him in the streets, particularly in his later years. Imagine that today, a poet stopped in the streets! It was also common for writers like Longfellow to have their autographs cut out of letters and sold, or even their signatures forged and sold."
Writing
Pearl published The Dante Club, his debut novel in 2003. The novel concerns a small group of Harvard professors and poets (including Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes) who must track down a killer before he derails their efforts to complete the first American translation of The Divine Comedy. The novel became an international sensation. Pearl's attention to historical facts, his imagination, his vivid descriptions and fine characterizations awed critics and delighted readers. Esquire magazine chose The Dante Club as its "Big Important Book of the Month." Since its 2003 publication, it has become an international bestseller, translated into 30 languages.
Pearl followed The Dante Club with another cagey combination of historical fact and mysterious fiction. The Poe Shadow takes place during the aftermath of the death of Edgar Alan Poe. In a labyrinthine plot that would surely have made the master of the macabre proud, an attorney named Quentin Hobson Clark seeks to uncover the exact details that lead up to the peculiar death of his favorite writer. The Poe Shadow was another major feat from Matthew Pearl. If anything, it is even richer and more intriguing than its predecessor. Poe's status as a great purveyor of mystery and the mystery which Pearl conjures within his plot makes for a most provocative mixture. Critics from all corners of the globe agreed. From Entertainment Weekly to The Spectator to The Independent, The Globe and Mail, Booklist, Bookpage, and countless others, The Poe Shadow is being hailed as another major achievement for Matthew Pearl. The novel has also become yet another international bestseller.
So, is Matthew Pearl heading for the kind of literary celebrity that so fascinates him? Well, Details magazine named the writer as one of its "Next Big Things," and Dan "The Da Vinci Code" Brown called him "the new shining star of literary fiction." Who knows? Maybe one day an aspiring young writer may see fit to place Matthew Pearl in the center of some fictional puzzler.
Extras
• Pearl was placed on the 2003 edition of Boston Magazine's annual "Hot List."
• His fascination with Edgar Alan Poe does not end with Poe's presence in The Poe Shadow. Pearl also edited a 2006 collection of Poe's C. Auguste Dupin mysteries titled Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Pearl’s plot is ambitious and satisfying, involving a murder and a missing manuscript, the opium trade, the emerging publishing business in New York and Boston, and the predicament of single, divorced women in America in the 19th century. Fans of Dickens will appreciate Pearl’s literary allusions and his thoroughly researched characterizations.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Bestseller Pearl (The Poe Shadow) delivers a period thriller that has the misfortune to fall short of the high standard set by Dan Simmons's Drood (Reviews, Nov. 24), which also centers on Charles Dickens's final, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. After the author dies in 1870, a series of suspicious deaths leads Dickens's U.S. publisher, James Osgood, to suspect they may be connected with the solution to the novel's puzzle. Accompanied by attractive bookkeeper Rebecca Sand, the sister of one of the victims, Osgood travels from Boston to England to seek clues to Drood's missing conclusion. The action shifts to India, where Charles's son Francis is a superintendent of the Bengal Mounted Police, and back in time, to the novelist's last American tour in 1867. Some awkward prose distracts ("There were several other grim faces at dinner that, like some imperceptible force, spread a dark cloud over the levity"), while the ending may strike some readers as a cop-out.
Publishers Weekly
Pearl's third historical novel (after The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow) explores the circumstances surrounding Charles Dickens's unfinished last work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Boston publisher James Osgood eagerly awaits the final installments of Drood after hearing of Dickens's sudden death. Unfortunately, Osgood's trusted messenger, Daniel, is killed before he can deliver the manuscript to the publishing house, and the manuscript disappears. Could Osgood's publishing rivals have stolen it, or is there an even deeper mystery going on? Accompanied by Daniel's sister, Osgood travels to England to search for clues about how Dickens planned on finishing Drood, unaware his enemies are close at hand. Pearl enriches his story through extended flashbacks, the inclusion of actual historical figures, including Osgood himself, and an in-depth knowledge of Dickens's career and literary works. Strongly recommended for all public libraries.
Laurel Bliss - Library Journal
Pearl’s latest literary historical mystery aligns perfectly with his two previous works, the widely applauded Dante Club (2002) and the equally esteemed Poe Shadow (2006); like its predecessors, the novel is a brilliant, exciting thriller exactingly set in past times and involving mysterious aspects of the lives of famous writers.... [The reader] will be well rewarded. —Brad Hooper
Booklist
A rousing yarn of opium, book pirating, murder most foul, man-on-man biting and other shenanigans-and that's just for starters. Charles Dickens is dead, and, inexplicably, people are beginning to die because of that fact-not because they've got no reason to live absent new tales from a beloved author, but because said author's last work-in-progress contains evidence of real-life mayhem that its perpetrators, it would seem, do not wish to see publicized. So runs the premise that Pearl, who specializes in literary mysteries, offers. The story unfolds on the docks of Boston, to which an office boy has run to retrieve the next installment of Dickens's Mystery of Edwin Drood, fresh off the boat from London. Said boy expires, unpleasantly, while a stranger of most peculiar manner is seen skulking in the vicinity, conspicuous by his "decidedly English accent" and "brown-parchment complexion," suggestive of India and imperial milieus beyond. Dickens's American publisher-better put, the only publisher in America who is paying the author royalties rather than stealing his work-sets out to solve the crime and retrieve the manuscript, with the clerk's resourceful sister on hand to help on a journey across oceans and continents. Meanwhile, our stranger is up to more nasty business, slashing throats, sawing bones and giving people the willies. It's clear that Pearl is having a fine time of it all, firing off a few inside jokes at the publishing business along the way: No matter that Dickens is dead with only six chapters done, says his London editor a trifle ungrammatically, for "Every reader who picks up the book, finding it unfinished, can spend their time guessing whatthe ending should be. And they'll tell their friends to buy a copy and do the same, so it can be argued."A pleasing whodunit that resolves nicely, bookending Dan Simmons's novel Drood (2009) as an imaginative exercise in what might be called alternative literary history.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In the novel, there is a stalker who shadows Charles Dickens's reading tour around in America, based on actual incidents that happened to Dickens. Think of some modern examples of celebrity stalking and discuss the unique characteristics of this type of obsession in and out of this novel.
2. James Osgood must find more about The Mystery of Edwin Drood to try to save his struggling publishing firm. Do you believe Osgood has additional motivations, whether personal or professional, for his quest?
3. The character of Rebecca Sand is a young working woman in Boston in the latter half of the nineteenth century. What are some of the interesting and surprising challenges facing her in that situation that struck you? Do you think she is properly appreciated by Osgood and the firm?
4. Dickens's death in 1870 and the incomplete status of his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, is at the heart of this novel's story. For those who have read Drood before, how did your knowledge of that novel influence your reading of The Last Dickens? For those who haven't read Drood, what did you learn about that final Dickens novel, and would you go out and read Drood now? Consider choosing Drood for your reading group or class and debate how it was to end or even “write” new endings.
5. The Last Dickens refers to the last novel Charles Dickens wrote. Does the title have any other meaning or significance to you? If Fields, Osgood & Co. were publishing Matthew's novel, and called you into their offices at 124 Tremont Street demanding a title change, what might you suggest?
6. There is much consternation and excitement over The Mystery of Edwin Drood's incomplete status among the characters in this novel, propelling various actions. Other books by famous authors that were never finished include The Aeneid by Virgil, The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton, A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, Septimus Felton by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Lesley Castle by Jane Austen. Some of these have undergone attempts to be “completed” by other writers or family members, as some of the characters in The Last Dickens wish to do with Drood. Should unfinished books like Drood have new endings written, or be left as fragments?
7. The novel's depiction of Charles Dickens is based closely on history. What are some of the facts of Dickens's life that most interested you that you may not have known before?
8. The novel depicts a dramatically different period in the publishing world. What were some of the things that surprised you to see how books and publishing operated in the nineteenth century?
9. In our age of increasingly digital media, how relevant are books and publishing today? Discuss whether there will—and should—be a time where physical books no longer exist. What would be the implications of this?
(Questions from author's website.)
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