Agatha Christie

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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Courtenay »

Obscene language, hmmm? And yet no-one ever dares to remind us what And Then There Were None's original title was... :wink:

That aside, here's an article that goes to show that not all Guardian writers turn up their noses at Agatha Christie: No-one should condescend to Agatha Christie — she's a genius
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by pete9012S »

The funny thing is that the article is written by the author Sophie Hannah,whose Christie Estate approved 2014 rendition of a Poirot novel,The Monogram Murders received a very mixed reaction from the cognoscenti over on the official Agatha Christie forum!!
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I have just finished reading chapter one of The Monogram Murders. To me it was dull and inauthentic, and Sophie Hannah's style is terribly irritating. I was fed up with all that Flyaway Hair, Flyaway Hair, Flyaway Hair by page 10.

Frankly I couldn't care less what happens in chapter two. I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than read any further.
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Re: Agatha Christie

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Courtenay wrote:Obscene language, hmmm? And yet no-one ever dares to remind us what And Then There Were None's original title was... :wink:
Well, I do! Ten Little Niggers (I still have an original edition) referred to an American rhyme, possibly called Ten Little Injuns. It was written by songwriter Septimus Winner in 1868 for a minstrel show and was much more elaborate than today's rhyme:

Ten little Injuns standin' in a line,
One toddled home and then there were nine;
Nine little Injuns swingin' on a gate,
One tumbled off and then there were eight.
Eight little Injuns gayest under heav'n.
One went to sleep and then there were seven;
Seven little Injuns cuttin' up their tricks,
One broke his neck and then there were six.
Six little Injuns all alive,
One kicked the bucket and then there were five;
Five little Injuns on a cellar door,
One tumbled in and then there were four.
Four little Injuns up on a spree,
One got fuddled and then there were three;
Three little Injuns out on a canoe,
One tumbled overboard and then there were two.
Two little Injuns foolin' with a gun,
One shot t'other and then there was one;
One little Injun livin' all alone,
He got married and then there were none

Wikipedia wrote:It is generally thought that this song was adapted, possibly by Frank J. Green in 1869, as "Ten Little Niggers", though it is possible that the influence was the other way round, with "Ten Little Niggers" being a close reflection of the text that became "Ten Little Indians". Either way, "Ten Little Niggers" became a standard of the blackface minstrel shows.[2] It was sung by Christy's Minstrels and became widely known in Europe, where it was used by Agatha Christie in her novel of the same name. The novel was later retitled And Then There Were None (1939), and remains one of her most famous works, about ten killings on a remote island.
I remember the rhyme well, and it was changed to Ten Little Indians at sometime in my childhood. However, it then became unacceptable to mention Indians, or anyone of a black race, so became Ten Little Soldiers (or Soldier boys). I'm not sure why 'soldiers' became a derogatory term, but it finally adapted to the last line, And Then There Were None.

The term 'Nigger' wasn't offensive in the 50s, when I grew up - many people called their black cats, Nigger - and I even seem to remember an artist's oil paint called nigger brown. Of course, the term should not be used today as it can cause considerable offence. Having said that, the derivative version 'Nigga' is used by black youths to each other without causing offence. As long as a white person doesn't use it.
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Julie2owlsdene »

I have the original also - Ten Little Niggers.

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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Courtenay »

So does my mum! :wink: It was already considered an insulting word in the US at the time, though (understandably), which is why the first American edition was called And Then There Were None — which eventually became the universally accepted title, decades later.
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Re: Agatha Christie

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John Curran is the author of the Edgar Award winning Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks and Murder in the Making. In 2005 he compiled 75 facts to celebrate 75 years of Miss Marple.

1. In her early years Agatha Christie didn't go to school but was educated at home by her mother and a succession of governesses.

2. She wrote her first book as the result of a challenge from her sister Madge.

3. In her late teens she studied to be a classical musician but was too nervous to perform.

4. She is the only crime writer to have created two equally famous and much loved characters - Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

5. She is the only female dramatist ever to have had three plays running simultaneously in London’s West End.

6. Endless Night is narrated by a young working-class male - and she wrote it when she was 76.

7. In 1922 she travelled around the world.

8. Her first book waited five years before publication having been rejected by six publishers.

9. She wrote six bitter sweet novels under the name Mary Westmacott.

10. She wrote an entire book over one weekend: Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott.

11. When she adapted four of her Poirot novels for the stage she dropped Poirot completely.

12. Hallowe’en Party is dedicated to P.G.Wodehouse whom she admired.

13. She dedicated The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side to Margaret Rutherford - the first cinema Miss Marple.

14. She was a dog lover.

15. She described The Mystery of the Blue Train as ‘easily the worst book I ever wrote’.

16. When he died, Hercule Poirot was given a full-page obituary in The New York Times.

17. Her favourite colour was green.

18. She never said, ‘An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have because the older she gets the more interested he becomes in her’.

19. Her home in Torquay, Greenway House, was requisitioned by the U.S. Navy during the Second World War.

20. She has a rose named after her.

21. She is the only crime novelist to achieve equal and international fame as a dramatist.

22. For many years she was the President of the local amateur drama society in Wallingford.

23. She was a teetotaller and non-smoker.

24. For many years she set and corrected an essay competition for the pupils of the local school.

25. On the day she died the West End theatres dimmed their lights for one hour.

26. Miss Marple was modelled on her maternal grandmother.

27. Two of her pet hates were marmalade pudding and cockroaches.

28. Her favourite writers were Elizabeth Bowen and Graham Greene.

29. When she wrote the part of Clarissa in Spider’s Web for the film star Margaret Lockwood, she also, unasked, created a role for Lockwood’s daughter.

30. The first stage Poirot was Charles Laughton.

31. On 13th April 1917 she qualified as a dispenser, thus acquiring her knowledge of poisons.

32. Twice in her life she ‘saw’ Hercule Poirot - once lunching in the Savoy and once on a boat in the Canary Islands.

33. In her 1942 Miss Marple novel The Body in the Library she mentions herself by name.

34. Her last public appearance was at the 1974 premiere of Murder on the Orient Express.

35. After seeing Joan Hickson in Murder on the Nile in 1946 she wrote to her hoping that ‘one day you will play my Miss Marple.’

36. She has a classroom named after her in the local school in Torquay.

37. One of her life’s passions was music, especially the operas of Wagner.

38. In 1931 she read one of her own stories on BBC radio.

39. The Mousetrap began life as a 20 minute radio play.

40. There are at least 2 ‘unknown’ Agatha Christies - unpublished radioplays: Butter in a Lordly Dish (1948) and Personal Call (1960).

41. She was the first crime writer to have 100,000 copies of ten of her titles published by Penguin on the same day in 1948 - A Penguin Million.

42. Her work on archaeological digs led to her becoming an expert photographer.

43. The Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul has an Agatha Christie Room where, it claims, she wrote Murder on the Orient Express.

44. The Mysterious Affair at Styles earned her the princely sum of £25.

45. A musical version of Hickory Dickory Dock, ‘Death Beat’, was planned in the early 60s.

46. She wrote a film script for Dickens' Bleak House in 1962.

47. When Penguin paperbacks were launched in 1935 The Mysterious Affair at Styles was one of the first 10 titles.

48. The first TV Miss Marple in 1956 was Gracie Fields in A Murder is Announced.

49. Her favourite composers were Elgar, Sibelius and Wagner.

50. She accepted the Presidency of the famous Detection Club in 1958 on the strict understanding that she would never have to make a speech.

51. Her 1927 title The Big Four was, in reality, a series of short stories reworked into a novel.

52. The Murder at the Vicarage was one of the first titles in Collins famous Crime Club series.

53. The first ever screen version of a Christie novel was a German one: Die Abenteuer G.M.B.H. (The Secret Adversary).

54. A pile of all of the US editions of Peril at End House would stretch to the moon.

55. The Mary Westmacott pseudonym remained a secret for almost 20 years.

56. The original programme for The Mousetrap had no title on the cover - just a mousetrap on a splash of red.

57. Agatha Christie’s name has appeared every day for the last 53 years in every newspaper with a West End theatre listing.

58. In 1954 she was the recipient of the first ever Grandmaster Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

59. She never allowed any representation of Poirot to appear on book jackets.

60. In 1961 she was conferred with an honorary degree from Exeter University.

61. In 1993 a Christie play, Chimneys, received its premiere in Canada - over 60 years after it was written.

62. At the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in May 2000 she was named Mystery Writer of the Century and the Poirot books Mystery Series of the Century.

63. The typewriter on which she wrote many of her novels is on view in Torre Abbey in Torquay.

64. Of her own work her favourite play was Witness for the Prosecution.

65. Agatha Christie and her novels have been a ‘Mastermind’ subject on three occasions.

66. Her favourite flower was Lily of the Valley.

67. In 1955 Agatha Christie became a Limited Company.

68. There is a bronze bust of her on Carey Green in Torquay.

69. She wrote her autobiography over a period of 15 years: 1950 - 1965.

70. In 1972 she was immortalised in Madame Tussauds.

71. She named her house Styles in 1924 after the success of her first novel.

72. Three Act Tragedy in 1935, became her first title to sell 10,000 copies in its first year.

73. Two of the Margaret Rutherford films are based on Poirot books; a third has no connection with Agatha Christie at all. Only Murder, She Said is truly a Miss Marple story.

74. She wrote many of her novels while on archaeological digs, many of them in a specially built house called ‘Beit Agatha’.

75. The Malice Domestic Convention in U.S (devoted to 'cosy' crime fiction) presents an annual award - The Agatha.
http://www.agathachristie.com/about-chr ... t-christie" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Agatha Christie

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pete9012S wrote: 18. She never said, ‘An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have because the older she gets the more interested he becomes in her’.
No? Oh well, she might have wished she had... :lol:
pete9012S wrote: 59. She never allowed any representation of Poirot to appear on book jackets.
Really? The copy of The Mysterious Affair at Styles that I read years ago had this cover:

Image

I can't remember the publication date of this edition (and can't find details of it anywhere online so far), but it looks old enough to have been published before Christie's death in 1976. Maybe she relaxed her rules later on in life — or they simply didn't consult her? :wink:

EDIT: Just realised it MUST be a pre-1976 edition, because the price on the cover is 2/-, and Britain converted to decimal currency in 1972. See, they'll make a detective out of me yet. 8)
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

pete9012S wrote:3. In her late teens she studied to be a classical musician...
An interesting parallel with Enid Blyton.
pete9012S wrote:10. She wrote an entire book over one weekend: Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott.
Even faster than Enid Blyton!
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Re: Agatha Christie

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Her holiday home was called Greenway, not Greenway House. It is now owned by the NT and we visited it on my birthday, a few years back - a birthday shared by Agatha herself.

There are several book jackets showing Poirot as well, including these:

ImageImage

Image Image
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Re: Agatha Christie

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Moonraker wrote:There are several book jackets showing Poirot as well, including these:
Yes, I knew I'd seen other examples, but I assumed they were published after her death, so her anti-Poirot-portraits stance no longer counted. Whereas the one I posted earlier must definitely have been published during her lifetime, so I can only assume that either she didn't object after all, or the publishers simply ignored her! :wink:
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by pete9012S »

All the original hardbacks published by Agatha Christie:

Image
Image


Here is a slightly larger picture collection of all the original hardbacks published by Agatha Christie:

http://share.pho.to/A1fiw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


I wonder whether the anti-Poirot stance on the cover related to her 1st edition hard-backed editions,as when she signed with Collins he never appeared again on the cover of the hard backed books.

After her unfair initial paltry six book deal with The Bodley Head she stayed with Collins in the UK for the rest of her life,forging a strong friendship with William 'Billy' Collins.

We read regarding the 1924 'Poirot Investigates' that:
The preparation of the book marked a further downturn in the relationship between Christie and the Bodley Head. She had become aware that the six-book contract she had signed with John Lane had been unfair to her in its terms. At first she meekly accepted Lane's strictures about what would be published by them, but by the time of Poirot Investigates Christie insisted that their suggested title of The Grey Cells of Monsieur Poirot was not to her liking and that the book was to be included in the tally of six books within her contract. The Bodley Head opposed this because the stories had already been printed in The Sketch. Christie held out and won her case.

This article in The Telegraph shows how involved and particular she was about her book covers:
She was the queen of crime fiction, but Agatha Christie should also be recognised as one of the most formidable businesswomen of her era, according to academics.

A newly released letter from the Christie archive illustrates the care that the author took over the marketing of her books, dismissing a publisher’s proposed cover design as “common” and “awful”.

The book in question was Sad Cypress, a courtroom drama published in 1940 and featuring Christie’s Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.
In a note to her literary agent, Edmund Cork, Christie complained that her publisher, the Collins Crime Club, had come up with a terrible book jacket.

She wrote: “My idea was that a black and white jacket would be very amusing and striking. White shiny background and black silhouette cypress and big black lettering — Don’t let Collins decide univocally [sic] on some frightful cover — their jackets [for] this book are AWFUL — so COMMON!!”

She requested that the offending product be pulped and reprinted with a classier cover design, ending her note: “I care about the appearance of my books.”

The letter is held in the archives at the University of Exeter, which is hosting a conference focusing on lesser-known aspects of Christie’s work.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebri ... -foul.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Notice how even Collins in 1974 two years before Agatha passed away depicted as much of Poirot on the cover as they dared in 'Poirot's Early Cases'...
(it's the fourth book from the end in this set.)

http://share.pho.to/A1fiw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Agatha Christie

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Julie2owlsdene wrote:Research tells me the missing three are:-

Dumb Witness, Pale Horse Bit 4 Secret Adversary.

Nemesis, Parker Payne Investigates, Poirot Investigates

Labours of Poirot, Hickory Dickory Dock, Cat Among the Pigeons.

They're out there at various prices, so I'll do a bit of Find Outing, Pete. :D

8)
I don't know whether you have completed your collection yet Julie.
I have six books extra to the complete 24 set in this version. I have just collected them all together,but sadly I don't even have one that you need out of my six.
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Julie2owlsdene »

I have collected all of them Pete, and have a few over myself. If there is any that you are missing, and I have it, I will give you the missing book/s

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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by pete9012S »

Well done Julie. It sounds like we both have the complete set of 24 books.

The ones I have twice are:

1.Ackroyd etc.
2.Murder On The Links etc.
3.Appointment With Death etc.
4.Death On The Nile etc.
5.Pricking Of My Thumbs etc.
6 The Hollow etc.

(I have just listed the first book in each volume,as obviously the set contains three books in one.)

Some ebay sellers want big money for this collection,but like you I got about twenty volumes for about £20 and then bought another small bundle of them to complete my collection.

I paid about £26 for them all including the duplicates.

There are a few more I had to collect in hardback editions as this collection only goes up to 1972:
Note: the set does not include Poirot's final case, Curtain, (first published in 1975), her final Tommy and Tuppence novel, Postern of Fate, or the posthumously published Miss Marple novel, Sleeping Murder. Or Miss Marples Final Cases & Elephants Can Remember
Also,Charles Osborne novelised three of Agatha Christie's Plays. Versions of Black Coffee (1998), The Unexpected Guest (1999) and Spider's Web (2000), have proved enduringly popular with readers.

This ebay seller wants £235.00 for his set,and I have seem sellers charging even more.

AGATHA CHRISTIE Crime Collection complete in 24 volumes HB DW Poirot Miss Marple

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AGATHA-CHRIST ... Swa-dWoQ2g" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Anyway,really glad you have completed your set without breaking the bank!
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Re: Agatha Christie

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Image

Just bought this book,originally published in 1931.
I have never read it.Any other Agatha Christie fans read it yet?
The Floating Admiral is a murder mystery novel written by the Detection Club, a group of golden age authors who in their time were leading crime fiction authors. The collaboration featured Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and G.K. Chesterton among others. The novel is formed of twelve chapters, a prologue and a conclusion, each written by a different member of the club, each chapter had to make sense but the author did not know where the previous authors were leading the story. The authors had to submit a sealed solution of how they envisioned the murder happening, but it was left to Anthony Berkeley to bring all of the loose ends together into a neat bow, an amazing feat. In short I believe that this is a literary masterpiece.

When a body washes up in the sleepy town of Wynmouth stabbed in the chest Inspector Rudge knows that something fishy is going on. The body is in the vicars rowing boat, and he is clearly withholding information, the victims own identity is called into doubt and a key member of the family has disappeared. A real challenge for the inspector and the reader!

I was so surprised by this novel, I had huge reservations about it because I was convinced it wouldn't read smoothly, that I would note the changes between authors and that the story wouldn't gel together. I should have known not to doubt the Detection Club! All the writers involved are not only wonderful in their own right but also together. I am so glad they wrote this novel.

The story was complicated, that I will not deny, but it was marvellous, I rarely noticed the change in writing styles and actually found that it made the read more interesting and readable. The solution was clever, and masterfully composed, I did not suspect the murderer at all and was in fact convinced it was a different character, a true sign of a good mystery. The absolute gem in this book though is the range of closed solutions submitted by the authors which are included at the end. Each one produces an Ah-Hah! moment, especially that of Agatha Christie (and I'm not just saying that because she is my favourite).

If you are interested in murder mystery novels and haven't read this, I highly recommend you get your hands on a copy, it may have been forgotten for eighty years but it is an absolute gem of a read and you won't be disappointed.
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