Much attention has been given to the illustrations on the wrapper and their significance. So far as I can find, the question was first raised in the _Spectator_. On 1st October 1870, in a review of the first edition of _Edwin Drood_, the _Spectator_ complained that the publishers had not given a facsimile of the vignetted cover. The critic proceeds: ‘By whom was the lamplight discovery of a standing figure, apparently meant for Edwin Drood, in the vignette at the bottom of the page, intended to be made?’ He inquired also whether the man entering with the lanthorn was John Jasper, and what were the directions given by Mr. Dickens as to the ascent of the winding staircase represented on the right hand of the cover. The _Spectator_ asked for any authentic indications which might exist of the turn which Dickens intended to give to the story. ‘Nor can we see how it can be possible that no such indications exist, with this prefiguring cover to prove that he had not only anticipated, but disclosed to some one or other, many of the situations he intended to paint.’ Since then others, and in particular Mr. Andrew Lang, have with much insistency declared that the bottom picture represents a meeting of the risen Edwin Drood with his horror-stricken uncle, John Jasper. In reply to these questions certain considerations may be adduced: 1. We have already shown from the testimony of Charles Allston Collins, as reported by his widow, and by Sir Luke Fildes, that he, at least, was not aware of any such intention in the mind of Dickens. On the contrary, Madame Perugini and Sir Luke Fildes are convinced that Edwin Drood was murdered. More than this, Charles Dickens the younger, who was more or less in his father’s confidence, agreed with them. As we have noted, he affirmed that his father had told him that Edwin Drood was murdered, and he constructed his play on that basis. 2. I attach much weight to Madame Perugini’s suggestion that whatever her father meant or did not mean, he was certainly not the man to give away on the cover the answer to the mystery. He may have meant—he very probably did—before he began the story to mystify his readers a little. This is shown, I think, by the various suggested titles printed on page 57. But as he rejected those titles, it is plain that he thought them unsatisfactory, and that he refrained from raising in the title at least the question whether the murder of Edwin Drood was accomplished.