Each of the twelve composite woodblock engravings appears within a bold, rectilinear frame of approximately 16 cm by 10 cm. Several scenes are set in London (no. 1 and no. 12 utilize as their backdrop an East End opium den that Dickens had actually visited with Inspector Charles F. Field of the London Metropolitan Police, whereas no. 10 is set in Mr. Grewgious's rooms in the Staple Inn, Holborn, West London). However, the majority are set in "Cloisterham," Dickens's name for Rochester, Kent, where he spent much of his childhood and outside which Gadshill, the mansion in which he died in June 1870, is located. Each serial number, April 1870 through September 1870, was accompanied by two full-page illustrations.
A Gallery of Fildes’ Illustrations for Dickens’s Mystery of Edwin Drood
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Bibliography
Dickens, Charles, and W. E. C. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, ed. Mary L. C. Grant. New text drawings by Zoffany Oldfield. London: J. M. Ouseley, 9 John Street, Adelphi, 1914.
Dickens, Charles. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. With Illustrations [by Sir Luke Fildes, R. A.] London: Chapman and Hall Limited, 193, Piccadilly. 1870.
_______. The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Reprinted Pieces and Other Stories. With Thirty Illustrations by L. Fildes, E. G. Dalziel, and F. Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1879. Vol. XX.
Paroissien, David (ed.). "The Illustrations," Appendix 3 in Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood. London: Penguin, 2002, pp. 294-299.
Walters, J. Cuming. The Complete "Mystery of Edwin Drood" by Charles Dickens: The History, Continuations, and Solutions (1870-1912). With a portrait [by Fildes in 1870]. Illustrations by Sir Luke Fildes, R. A., [and] F. G. Kitton. Facsmiles and a bibliography. London: Chapman & Hall, 1912.
Walters, J. Cuming. "Edwin Drood Continued." Dickensian Vol. 10, No. 9 (September 1914): 238-241.
Ward, Leslie. Forty Years of 'Spy'. London: Chatto and Windus, 1915.
Created 21 August 2025