APPENDIX FRAGMENT OF ‘THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD’

When Forster was just finishing his biography of Dickens, he found among the leaves of one of the novelist’s other manuscripts certain loose slips in his writing, ‘on paper only half the size of that used for the tale, so cramped, interlined, and blotted as to be nearly illegible.’ These proved, upon examination, to contain a suggested chapter for Edwin Drood, in which Sapsea, the auctioneer, appears as the principal figure, surrounded by a group of characters new to the story. That chapter, being among the last things Dickens wrote, seems to contain so much of interest that it may be well to reprint it here.—ED.