Drood (novel)

This article is about the 2009 novel. For the musical, see Drood.

Drood is a novel written by Dan Simmons. The book was initially published on February 1, 2009 by Little, Brown and Company. It is a fictionalized account of the last five years of Charles Dickens' life.^[1]

Drood

Hardcover first edition
Author	Dan Simmons
Language	English
Genre	Psychological Thriller, Historical fiction
Publisher	Little, Brown and Company (US), Quercus (United Kingdom)
Publication date	February 1, 2009
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	777 pp (first edition)
ISBN	978-0-316-00702-3
OCLC	225870345
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 22
LC Class	PS3569.I47292 D76 2009

Overview

The book is a fictionalized account of the last five years of Charles Dickens' life told from the viewpoint of Dickens' friend and fellow author, Wilkie Collins. The title comes from Dickens' unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The novel's complex plot mixes fiction with biographical facts from the lives of Dickens, Collins, and other literary and historical figures of the Victorian era, complicated even further by the narrator's constant use of opium and opium derivatives such as laudanum, rendering him an unreliable narrator.

Film

In 2008, Guillermo del Toro was attached to direct a film adaptation of Drood for Universal Pictures,^[2] but the project has not occurred.