Drood (2009)
Drood is a 2009 biographical fiction book written by Dan Simmons.
On 9 June 1865, Charles Dickens survived the Staplehurst rail disaster, crawling among the dying with brandy and an unfinished manuscript. In Simmons's telling, he also met a pale figure who called himself Drood, and spent the last five years of his life pursuing him into the crypts, opium dens, and buried rivers beneath London. Our guide is Wilkie Collins: friend, collaborator, laudanum devotee, and seething rival, watching the most famous novelist alive slide into an obsession he cannot explain. Simmons builds the mystery from documented history, then lets the Victorian dark seep through every gap in the record.
Quick answers
What is Drood about?
On 9 June 1865, Charles Dickens survived the Staplehurst rail disaster, crawling among the dying with brandy and an unfinished manuscript. In Simmons's telling, he also met a pale figure who called himself Drood, and spent the last five years of his life pursuing him into the crypts, opium dens, and buried rivers beneath London. Our guide is Wilkie Collins: friend, collaborator, laudanum devotee, and seething rival, watching the most famous novelist alive slide into an obsession he cannot explain. Simmons builds the mystery from documented history, then lets the Victorian dark seep through every gap in the record.
When was Drood published?
Drood was published in 2009.
Who made Drood?
Drood was written by Dan Simmons.
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Drood in our writing
- Companion guide: Hyperion Cantos: The Complete Guide to Dan Simmons' Far-Future Epic
A few thoughts on Drood
The Prestige shares this book's DNA: Victorian rivals, consuming obsession, and testimony you learn to read carefully. Penny Dreadful offers the same gaslit London where literary figures walk straight into horror. From Hell, Alan Moore's Ripper comic, does for Whitechapel what Simmons does for Undertown: it digs beneath the real city until history itself feels haunted.
Stories about an obsession that swallows the person having it
Wilkie Collins spends five years chasing Dickens's obsession with a man who may not exist, his laudanum haze blurring fact and delusion. Death Note and Watchmen both follow a mind convinced of its righteousness until it stops noticing the damage it causes. Mr. Mercedes hands that fixation to a retired cop, and One of Us Is Next keeps its narrators circling a threat they cannot stop chasing.