Thomas Power James (better known as T. P. James) was a publisher in
Brattleboro, Vermont
Brattleboro (), originally Brattleborough, is a New England town, town in Windham County, Vermont, United States, located about north of the Massachusetts state line at the confluence of Vermont's West River (Vermont), West River and the Connec ...
best known for publishing a completion of
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...
' ''
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' is the final novel by English author Charles Dickens, originally published in 1870.
Though the novel is named after the character Edwin Drood, it focuses more on Drood's uncle, John Jasper, a precentor, choirm ...
'' claimed to be written by the spirit of Dickens channeled through
automatic writing
Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged sp ...
, a form of
spiritualism
Spiritualism may refer to:
* Spiritual church movement, a group of Spiritualist churches and denominations historically based in the African-American community
* Spiritualism (beliefs), a metaphysical belief that the world is made up of at leas ...
.
The book, published in 1873 under the title ''Part Second of the Mystery of Edwin Drood,'' was reviewed by the ''New York Times,'' as well as regional newspapers, like the ''
Salem Observer
The ''Salem Observer'' (1823–1919) was a weekly newspaper published in Salem, Massachusetts. Among the editors: J.D.H. Gauss, Benj. Lynde Oliver, Gilbert L. Streeter, Joseph Gilbert Waters. Contributors included Wilson Flagg, Stephen B. Ives Jr ...
''.
With a successful marketing campaign, the book became an item of comment in the literary community, with an essay by
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Hol ...
in
''The Bookman'' negatively comparing the continuation of the novel with the original work.
Subsequent scholarship has later debated the authenticity and similarity of the work to the original Dickens.
A writing contest was hosted for several years in the town of Brattleboro to commemorate the hoax publisher, and will be re-launched in October of 2022.
References
Further reading
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External links
*
American spiritualists
Charles Dickens
People from Brattleboro, Vermont
American publishers (people)
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