And Then There Were None Agatha Christie

The novel has a long and noteworthy history of publication. It is a continuously best selling novel in English and in translation to other languages since its initial publication. From the start, in English, it was published under two different titles, due to different sensitivity to the author's title in the UK and in the US at first publication.

The novel was originally published in late 1939 and early 1940 almost simultaneously, in the United Kingdom and the United States. The serialization was in 23 parts in the Daily Express from Tuesday 6 June to Saturday 1 July 1939. All of the instalments carried an illustration by "Prescott" with the first having an illustration of Burgh Island in Devon which inspired the setting of the story. The serialized version did not contain any chapter divisions.[25] The book retailed for seven shillings and sixpence.

Title

In the UK the book first appeared under the title Ten Little Niggers, in book and newspaper serialized formats. In the United States it was published under the title And Then There Were None, in both book and serial formats. Both of the original US publications changed the title from that originally used in the UK, due to the offensiveness of the word in American culture, where it was more widely perceived as a racially loaded ethnic slur or insult compared to the contemporaneous culture in the United Kingdom. The serialized version appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in seven parts from 20 May (Volume 211, Number 47) to 1 July 1939 (Volume 212, Number 1) with illustrations by Henry Raleigh, and the book was published in January 1940 by Dodd, Mead and Company for $2.[4][5][6]

In the original UK novel, and in succeeding publications until 1985, all references to "Indians" or "Soldiers" were originally "Nigger", including the island's name, the pivotal rhyme found by the visitors, and the ten figurines.[5] UK editions continued to use the original title until the current definitive title appeared with a reprint of the 1963 Fontana Paperback in 1985.[7]

The word "nigger" was already racially offensive in the United States by the start of the 20th century, and therefore the book's first US edition (1940) and first serialization changed the title to And Then There Were None and removed all references to the word from the book, as did the 1945 motion picture (except that the first US edition retained 'nigger in the woodpile' in Chapter 2 Part VII and Chapter 7 Part III). Sensitivity to the original title of the novel was remarked by Sadie Stein in 2016, commenting on a BBC mini series with the title And Then There Were None, where she noted that "even in 1939, this title was considered too offensive for American publication."[26] In general, "Christie’s work is not known for its racial sensitivity, and by modern standards her oeuvre is rife with casual Orientalism."[26] The original title was based on a rhyme from minstrel shows and children's games. Stein quotes Alison Light as to the power of the original name of the island in the novel, Nigger Island, "to conjure up a thrilling 'otherness', a place where revelations about the 'dark side' of the English would be appropriate".[27] Light goes on to say that "Christie's location [the island] is both more domesticated and privatised, taking for granted the construction of racial fears woven into psychic life as early as the nursery."[27] Speaking of the "widely known" 1945 film, Stein added that "we’re merely faced with fantastic amounts of violence, and a rhyme so macabre and distressing one doesn't hear it now outside of the Agatha Christie context."[26] She felt that the original title of the novel in the UK, seen now, "jars, viscerally".[26]

Best-selling crime novel

And Then There Were None is the best-selling crime novel of all time, and made Agatha Christie the best-selling novelist, according to the Agatha Christie Estate.[2]

It is Christie's best-selling novel, with more than 100 million copies sold; it is also the world's best-selling mystery and one of the best-selling books of all time. Publications International lists the novel as the sixth best-selling title.[8]

Editions in English

The book and its adaptations have been released under various new names since the original publication, including Ten Little Indians (1946 play, Broadway performance and 1964 paperback book), Ten Little Soldiers, and official title per the Agatha Christie Limited website, And Then There Were None.[2] UK editions continued to use the work's original title until the 1980s; the first UK edition to use the alternative title And Then There Were None appeared in 1985 with a reprint of the 1963 Fontana Paperback.[7]

• Christie, Agatha (November 1939). Ten Little Niggers. London: Collins Crime Club. OCLC 152375426. Hardback, 256 pp. First edition.
• Christie, Agatha (January 1940). And Then There Were None. New York: Dodd, Mead. OCLC 1824276. Hardback, 264 pp. First US edition.
• Christie, Agatha (1944). And Then There Were None. New York: Pocket Books (Pocket number 261). Paperback, 173 pp.
• Christie, Agatha (1947). Ten Little Niggers. London: Pan Books (Pan number 4). Paperback, 190 pp.
• Christie, Agatha (1958). Ten Little Niggers. London: Penguin Books (Penguin number 1256). Paperback, 201 pp.
• Christie, Agatha (1963). Ten Little Niggers. London: Fontana. OCLC 12503435. Paperback, 190 pp. The 1985 reprint was the first UK publication of the novel under the title And Then There Were None.[7]
• Christie, Agatha (1964). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books. OCLC 29462459. First publication of novel as Ten Little Indians.
• Christie, Agatha (1964). And Then There Were None. New York: Washington Square Press. Paperback, teacher's edition.
• Christie, Agatha (1977). Ten Little Niggers (Greenway ed.). London: Collins Crime Club. ISBN 0-00-231835-0. Collected works, Hardback, 252 pp. (Except for reprints of the 1963 Fontana paperback, this was one of the last English-language publications of the novel under the title Ten Little Niggers.)[28]
• Christie, Agatha (1980). The Mysterious Affair at Styles; Ten Little Niggers; Dumb Witness. Sydney: Lansdowne Press. ISBN 0-7018-1453-5. Late use of the original title in an Australian edition.
• Christie, Agatha (1986). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-55222-8. Last publication of novel under the title Ten Little Indians.

Foreign-language editions

Many older translations were based on the original British text, although the word used to translate nigger was often somewhat less offensive, more analogous to English negro or negrito. Languages where the most recent edition retains racial epithets include Spanish, Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian,[29] Russian[30] and Hungarian, as well as the 1987 Soviet film adaptation Desyat Negrityat. Changes similar to those in the British edition in the 1980s were made to the German novel in 2003,[n 1] after 2002 protests in Hanover against a stage version using the old title.[31] Similar changes were made in Dutch in 2004,[n 2] Swedish in 2007,[n 3] Brazilian Portuguese in 2009,[n 4] Polish in 2017,[n 5] French in 2020,[n 6] and Turkish in 2021.[n 7] In 1999, the Slovak National Theatre changed the title of a stage adaptation mid-run.[n 8] The estate of Agatha Christie now offers it under only one title in English, And Then There Were None,[2] and translations increasingly use the equivalent of this as their title.[35] European Portuguese translations have been titled Convite Para a Morte (1948: "An Invitation to Death") and As Dez Figuras Negras (2011: "The Ten Black Figures" – referring to the figurines, in this case minimally anthropomorphic).[35] The Finnish translation Eikä yksikään pelastunut ("No one was saved") in 1940 had its title taken from the American first edition, before being renamed Kymmenen pientä neekeripoikaa ("Ten little negro boys") in 1968. This change was reversed in 2003.[40]