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*'''Mr. Owen''', the unseen host whose voice is heard on the record (or tape in film adaptations) explaining why these ten people have been gathered together. He was voiced on film by [[Christopher Lee]] and [[Orson Wells]], among others. |
*'''Mr. Owen''', the unseen host whose voice is heard on the record (or tape in film adaptations) explaining why these ten people have been gathered together. He was voiced on film by [[Christopher Lee]] and [[Orson Wells]], among others. |
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FUCK YOUR MOM IN THE VAGINA AND YOUR DAD IN THE ASS HE LOVES IT! |
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==Plot summary== |
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Ten people journey to a house on a fictitious island off the coast of [[Devon]]. Upon arriving, each one finds a slightly odd bit of [[bric-a-brac]] in his or her room and a framed copy of a nursery rhyme, ''Ten Little Niggers'', hanging on the wall: |
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''Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; |
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''One choked his little self and then there were Nine.''<br/> |
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''Nine little Indian boys sat up very late; |
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''One overslept himself and then there were Eight.''<br/> |
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''Eight little Indian boys traveling in [[Devon]]; |
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''One said he'd stay there and then there were Seven.''<br/> |
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''Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks; |
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''One chopped himself in halves and then there were Six.''<br/> |
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''Six little Indian boys playing with a hive; |
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''A bumblebee stung one and then there were Five.''<br/> |
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''Five little Indian boys going in for [[law]]; |
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''One got into [[Court of Chancery|Chancery]] and then there were Four.''<br/> |
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''Four little Indian boys going out to sea; |
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''A [[red herring]] swallowed one and then there were Three.''<br/> |
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''Three little Indian boys walking in the [[Zoo]]; |
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''A big [[bear]] hugged one and then there were Two.''<br/> |
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''Two little Indian boys were out in the [[sun]]; |
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''One got all frizzled up and then there was one.'' (in some versions ''Two Little Nigger boys playing with a gun; One shot the other and then there was one.'')<br/> |
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''One little Indian boy left all alone; |
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''He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.'' |
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Ten figurines of little Indians are found in the dining room. |
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When the guests gather in the parlor after dinner the first night, a [[gramophone]] recording bearing the label ''Swan Song'' informs them that all ten of them have been found guilty of murder, although in each case, the law was powerless to punish them: |
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*Anthony Marston ran over and killed John and Lucy Combes while driving recklessly. Due to his wealth and social position, he was never properly prosecuted and simply had his [[driver's license]] withdrawn. |
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* Mr. and Mrs. Rogers let their [[invalid]] employer, Jennifer Brady, die by withholding her medicine. |
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* General MacArthur sent his wife's lover, Lieutenant Arthur Richmond, on a suicidal mission during [[World War I]]. |
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* Miss Brent dismissed her maid, Beatrice Taylor, after she became pregnant. The maid later committed suicide. |
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* Wargrave gave the [[Capital punishment|death penalty]] to a defendant, Edward Seton, despite the evidence supporting his innocence. |
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* Armstrong performed an operation while drunk and thereby killed Louisa Mary Clees. |
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* Blore planted false evidence in the trial of a bank robber named James Landor, who later died in prison. |
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* Lombard abandoned a party of 21 native retainers to die in the African bush. |
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* Vera Claythorne purposefully let a small boy in her care named Cyril Hamilton swim out to sea and drown, but was cleared by a coroner's inquest. |
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The characters realize they have all been tricked into coming to the island, but now have no way to get back to the mainland. The guests are then murdered, one by one, with each murder referring to a verse of the poem found in their rooms. First to die is Anthony Marston, who dies from [[cyanide]] in his drink. The next morning, Mrs. Rogers never wakes up and is assumed to have received a fatal overdose of sleeping drugs. At lunchtime, General MacArthur is found dead from a blow to the back of his head. In growing panic, the survivors search the island for the murderer or possible hiding places, but find nothing. |
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They then realize that the murderer must be one of them, and is playing a sadistic game, killing them in a manner paralleling the nursery rhyme, and also removing one of ten little figurines in the dining room after each murder. The survivors have a meeting and discover that none of them has an alibi for any of the deaths. They conclude that the murderer is dispensing his own form of justice. |
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The next morning, Rogers is found dead in the woodshed, having been struck in the head with a large axe. Later that day, Emily Brent dies from an injection of [[potassium cyanide]] – the injection mark on her neck is a parody of a bee sting. The five survivors – Dr. Armstrong, Justice Wargrave, Philip Lombard, Vera Claythorne, and Inspector Blore – become increasingly paranoid. Wargrave announces that anything on the island that could be used as a weapon should be locked up. They lock up Wargrave's sleeping pills and Armstrong's medical equipment, but Lombard's revolver has gone missing. They spend the afternoon sitting around, watching each other. |
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Everyone decides to just sit around, with only one leaving at any one time - theoretically, they should all be safe that way. Vera, the one most wracked by guilt, goes up to her room and is frightened by a strand of seaweed that represents the boy she murdered by drowning. Everyone goes to check on her, and when they return to the drawing room, they discover that the Judge has been murdered - but they can't figure out who had the chance to do it. That night, the ex-policeman, Blore, hears someone sneaking out. He searches the remaining rooms, and discover that Armstrong, the doctor, is missing - so he must be the killer. |
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Vera, Inspector Blore, and Lombard think it best to go outside when morning arrives. Blore later returns to the house to get some sustenance, and a dull thud is heard. When Vera and Philip come to see what happened, they find Blore dead, his head crushed by a heavy marble clock shaped like a bear. Not knowing if Armstrong is dead or alive, they assume that he did it and decide to stay out of the house. |
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The pair then walk along the cliffs, finding in the process Armstrong's drowned body. Vera and Lombard then realize that they are the only two left. Even though neither could possibly have murdered the inspector, their mutual suspicion has driven them to a breaking point and each of them assumes the other to be the murderer. |
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Vera Kills Lombard with his very own revolver. |
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The police find the Island a few days later, and are puzzled by the mystery - they can't figure out who killed everyone, since there are only bodies on the Island, and no one could have escaped it. A few weeks later, a bottle is caught a fisherman. Inside it is a confession written by Wargrave - it explains and why he killed everyone. His whole life he had twin conflicting desires - one for justice, the other to kill people. He'd enjoyed killing the guilty by sentencing them to death in his court, but that wasn't good enough. He wanted to kill people himself. Once he found that he was dying of cancer, he decided to go through with it. He found nine guilty people and lured them to the Island, then murdered them one by one, using Armstrong to help fake his death so that he wouldn't be a suspect. Once everyone was dead, he arranged to kill himself so that it would look like his fake death - so the police would be confused by an unsolvable crime. Lastly, he sealed up his confession in a bottle and threw it out to see, because he couldn't bear the thought of no one ever knowing about how brilliant he was. |
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===Epilogue=== |
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<!-- Wikipedia contains spoilers. Please do not delete information regarding plot endings! --> |
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The epilogue to the novel consists of a conversation concerning the unsolved mystery. Inspector Maine, who is in charge of the case, is making his report to the Assistant Commissioner at [[Scotland Yard]]. The police are baffled, although a chance comment made by one of them could give the clue they need to solve the mystery, but to no avail. (Oddly they take no notice of the rhyme on the victims' wall.) |
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They have concluded from the physical evidence and various characters' diaries and journal entries that Blore, Armstrong, Lombard, and Claythorne were definitely the last to die. |
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Blore could not have died last, as the clock was definitely dropped onto him from above, and it would have been impossible for him to have it fall on him. Armstrong could not have been last: his drowned body was dragged above the high-tide mark by someone else. Nor could Lombard, since he was shot on the beach and the revolver was found upstairs in the hallway, outside the door of Wargrave's room. That left Vera (whose fingerprints were on the [[pistol]] and from whose window the clock was dropped on Blore), who hanged herself from the ceiling; but the chair from which she leapt with the noose around her neck was found pushed against the wall, out of reach from where she might have stood on it. |
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The man who made all the arrangements for the island was Isaac Morris, a shady dealer known to efficiently cover his tracks when doing business. He was also the one who hired Lombard to go to the island. However, he cannot tell the police anything: he died of an overdose the day the party set sail. |
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During the period when the killings were taking place and immediately after, no-one could have gotten onto or left the island without being seen and the weather was too bad anyway. This rules out the possibility that "Mr. Owen" was some unidentified person who committed the murders while evading detection by the guests. |
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Hence, although one of the ten guests ''must'' have been the killer, none of them ''could'' have been. |
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===Postscript=== |
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A bottle with a letter in it is found by a fishing trawler. The master of the trawler sends it to Scotland Yard. The late Judge Lawrence Wargrave wrote the letter to explain that he had planned the killings because, he writes, ever since he was a child, he had been prone both to [[sadism]] and to fascination with the legal system. Wargrave first freely divulges his own hunger for blood, combined with his desire for strict justice (he never was able to punish someone whom he honestly thought as innocent) and his delight in seeing the guilty punished. When Wargrave was told by his Harley Street physician that he was terminally ill, Wargrave decided to go out in a blaze of drama which would satiate his inner urges, rather than just letting his life slowly trickle away. |
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Thereafter, he details how he picked his victims, including a drug-dealing hypochondriac, Isaac Morris, whose drugs led to the death of a daughter of friends of Wargarve. Wargrave mostly heard about the cases in the course of his work, and even met the man whose life was ruined after Vera Claythorne, his lover, caused the death of his beloved nephew, wanting to make him the inheritor of the boy's fortune. Wargrave explains how he murdered Morris, Marston, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, Macarthur, and Emily Brent. He then deceived Dr. Armstrong into pronouncing him "dead", thus allowing the two to meet by the cliffs to discuss a strategy for determining the killer's identity. When Armstrong arrived, Wargrave tricked him into peering over the edge and shoved him over, then went back to the house and pretended to be dead. His trick made it possible for him to kill Blore and orchestrate the deaths of Lombard and Vera. |
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After Vera (the guiltiest of the "condemned" according to the judge, since she deliberately allowed a child to drown but managed to pass herself off as a heroine who tried to rescue the boy) hanged herself, Wargrave, who had been watching from the bedroom closet, pushed the chair against the wall. He then wrote out his confession, putting the letter in a bottle and casting the bottle into the sea. He states that his only regret is that it was not enough to concoct an unsolvable mystery – he craves posthumous recognition of his brilliant scheme – therefore he explains three clues which should point to him as the killer in case his letter is not found: |
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# Wargrave mentions in the letter that Edward Seton's death was justified because Seton, despite his charm and excellent performance on the witness stand, was genuinely guilty of the crime of which he was accused, proof of which the police now have. Therefore, Wargrave was the only guest who did '''not''' wrongfully cause the death of anyone (before coming to the island). |
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# The "red herring" line in the poem suggests the fact that Armstrong was tricked into his death - and that the respectable Justice Wargrave is the only person in whom Armstrong would have been likely to confide. |
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# The bullet would leave a red mark in Wargrave's forehead similar to the [[Curse and mark of Cain|mark of Cain]], the first murderer described in the Biblical [[Old Testament]]. |
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The conclusion of the judge's letter indicates that he planned to shoot himself while sitting on his bed, so that his body would fall onto the bed as if it had been laid there. He fastened the gun to the doorknob with a piece of elastic cord in such a way that the recoil would snap the gun out into the hallway as the door to his room closed. Thus the police found ten dead bodies and an unsolvable mystery on Indian Island. |
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==Literary significance and reception== |
==Literary significance and reception== |
Revision as of 17:12, 4 December 2007
File:AndThenThereWereNoneBookCover.jpg Cover of HarperCollins edition (2003) with present-day title. See Publication History section below for image of first edition with former title. | |
Author | Agatha Christie |
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Cover artist | Not known |
Language | English |
Genre | Crime novel |
Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
Publication date | November 1939 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Pages | 256 pp (first edition, hardback) |
ISBN | NA Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
Preceded by | The Regatta Mystery |
Followed by | Sad Cypress |
And Then There Were None is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in November 1939 under the title of Ten Little Niggers [1] and in US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1940 under the title of And Then There Were None. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6d). The novel has also been published and filmed under the title Ten Little Indians. It is Christie's best-selling novel with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery, according to the editors of Publications International, Ltd
Plot introduction
Ten people, each with a deadly secret, find themselves trapped on an island where they become the subjects of a cruel game played by a figure styling himself Mr. U. N. Owen ("Unknown"). They are killed according to an old nursery rhyme, Ten Little Indians.
Characters
- Anthony James Marston. An almost perfect specimen of a man born to a wealthy family. Amoral, vain and self-absorbed, with no time for worrying about those whom he may have harmed, intentionally or otherwise.
- Mrs. Ethel Rogers, the nervous housekeeper and cook. She is a pale-faced, ghostlike woman with shifty light eyes, who is scared easily. One of the first people to come to the island; respectable and efficient but seems scared of something and is always looking over her shoulder.
- General John Gordon Macarthur, a retired World War I hero. Now a lonely but still proud man who has lost contact with his old friends in the military and has, according to the rumors, more than a few skeletons in his closet.
- Mr. Thomas Rogers, the butler, Mrs. Rogers' husband. One of the first people to come to the island; respectable and efficient but with no imagination. He is a very hard worker even in his old age.
- Emily Caroline Brent, an elderly spinster and a religious zealot. A woman of unyielding principles who uses the Christian Bible to justify her inability to show compassion or understanding for others, which may have caused suffering in the past.
- Justice Lawrence Wargrave, a wealthy and sadistic retired judge, famous for the many death sentences he pronounced in his career. He may have used the letter of the law to evade the spirit of the law on occasions.
- Dr. Edward George Armstrong, a Harley Street surgeon. Worked his way up the social ladder but lately he has become tired of the long working hours and little reprieve. Has an extremely addictive personality which may have got him into trouble in the past.
- William Henry Blore, a retired police inspector, now a private investigator. A big, hulking and bullying man who solved a series of robberies during his police days but may not have been entirely honest about his methods. Known to his friends as "Bill".
- Philip Lombard, a soldier of fortune. Traveled most of the world and has a reputation of being a good man in a tight spot: he has apparently "sailed very near the wind" on occasion due to shady activities. Literally down to his last square meal, he comes to the island with a loaded revolver.
- Vera Elizabeth Claythorne, a young teacher, secretary, and ex-governess. She is forced to take mostly secretarial jobs since her last job as a governess ended in the death of her charge.
- Mr. Owen, the unseen host whose voice is heard on the record (or tape in film adaptations) explaining why these ten people have been gathered together. He was voiced on film by Christopher Lee and Orson Wells, among others.
FUCK YOUR MOM IN THE VAGINA AND YOUR DAD IN THE ASS HE LOVES IT!
Literary significance and reception
Robert Barnard: "Unusually suspenseful and menacing detective-story-cum-thriller. The closed setting with the succession of deaths is here taken to its logical conclusion, and the dangers of ludicrousness and sheer reader-disbelief are skilfully avoided. Probably the best-known Christie, and justifiably among the most popular."[2]
Film, TV and theatrical adaptations
In 1943, Agatha Christie adapted the story for the stage. In the process of doing so, she realized that the novel's grim conclusion would not work dramatically on stage as there would be no one left to tell the tale, so she reworked the ending for Lombard and Vera to be innocent of the crimes of which they were accused, survive, and fall in love. Some of the names were also changed with General Macarthur becoming General McKenzie.
The story was adapted for the cinema and television movies, with the action sometimes taking place in locations other than an island:
- And Then There Were None (1945). Directed by René Clair; screenplay by Dudley Nichols. USA. Set on an island.
- Ten Little Niggers (1949). UK. BBC TV adaptation.
- Ten Little Indians (1959). Directed by Paul Bogart, Philip F. Falcone, Leo Farrenkopf and Dan Zampino; screenplay by Philip H. Reisman Jr. USA. Truncated TV adaptation of the play.
- Ten Little Indians (1965). Directed by George Pollock; screenplay by Peter Yeldham. UK. Set in the Austrian Alps.
- Gumnaam. (1965). Directed by Raja Nawathe; screenplay by Dhruva Chatterjee. India. Uncredited adaptation; set in a remote Indian location by the sea; many elements added to Christie's play.
- Five Dolls for an August Moon (1969) (uncredited giallo adaptation)
- Dix petits nègres (1970). Directed by Pierre Sabbagh; screenplay by Pierre Brive. French TV adaptation..
- And Then There Were None (1974). Directed by Peter Collinson; screenplay by Peter Welbeck. France / Spain / West Germany / Italy. Set in the Iranian desert.
- Desyat Negrityat ("Ten Little Negroes") (1987). Directed and written by Stanislav Govorukhin. USSR. Uses the novel's original setting and ending.
- Ten Little Indians (1989). Directed by Alan Birkinshaw. UK. Set on an African safari.
Many of the films follow the play's humorous tone and more optimistic ending. A newer version of the play was adapted for stage in October 2005, which followed the book a bit more closely.
The K.B.S. Productions Inc. film, A Study in Scarlet (1933), predates the publication of Ten Little Niggers and follows a strikingly similar plot. It is a Sherlock Holmes movie but bears no resemblance to Arthur Conan Doyle's original story of the same name. In this case, the rhyme refers to "Ten Little Black Boys".
Publication history
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/And_Then_There_Were_None_First_Edition_Cover_1939.jpg/220px-And_Then_There_Were_None_First_Edition_Cover_1939.jpg)
The novel was originally published in Britain under the title Ten Little Niggers in 1939.[1][3] All references to "Indian" in the story were originally "Nigger": thus the island was called "Nigger Island" [1] rather than "Indian Island" and the poem found by each murder victim was also called Ten Little Niggers [1] rather than Ten Little Indians.
For the United States market, the novel was first serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1939 and then published separately in 1940. Both publications used the less inflammatory title And Then There Were None. The 1945 motion picture also used this title. In 1946, the play was published under the new title Ten Little Indians (the same title under which it had been performed on Broadway), and in 1964, an American paperback edition also used this version.
British editions continued to use the work's original title until the 1980s and the first British edition to use the alternative title And Then There Were None appeared in 1985 with a reprint of the 1963 Fontana Paperback. [4] Today And Then There Were None is the title most commonly used. However, the original title survives in many foreign-language versions of the novel: for example, the Spanish title is Diez Negritos, while the French title is Dix petits nègres. [5] A Dutch translation available as late as 1981 even used the work's original English title Ten Little Niggers. The 1987 Russian film adaptation has the title Десять негритят (Desyat' negrityat). In addition, the 2003 Harper Collins edition changes the name of the island to "Soldiers Island" and the nursery rhyme is changed to "Ten Little Soldiers", while the computer adventure game based on the novel uses "Ten Little Sailor Boys".
Notable editions of the novel
- Christie, Agatha (1939). Ten Little Niggers. London: Collins Crime Club. OCLC 152375426.
{{cite book}}
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ignored (help) Hardback, 256 pp. (First edition) - Christie, Agatha (1940). And Then There Were None. New York: Dodd, Mead. OCLC 1824276. Hardback, 264 pp. (First US edition)
- 1944, Pocket Books, 1944, Paperback, 173 pp
- 1947, Pan Books, 1947, Paperback, 190 pp
- 1958, Penguin Books, 1958, Paperback, 201 pp
- Christie, Agatha (1963). And Then There Were None. London: Fontana. OCLC 12503435. Paperback, 190 pp. (The 1985 reprint was the first UK publication of novel under title "And Then There Were None". [6])
- Christie, Agatha (1964). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books. OCLC 29462459. (First publication of novel under title "Ten Little Indians")
- 1964, Washington Square Press, 1964, (Paperback - teacher's edition)
- Christie, Agatha (1977). Ten Little Niggers (Greenway edition ed.). London: Collins Crime Club. ISBN 0002318350.
{{cite book}}
:|edition=
has extra text (help) Collected works, Hardback, 252 pp (Except for reprints of the 1963 Fontana paperback, this was one of the last English-language publications of novel under the title "Ten Little Niggers"[7]) - Christie, Agatha (1980). The Mysterious Affair at Styles; Ten Little Niggers; Dumb Witness. Sydney: Lansdowne Press. ISBN 0701814535. Late use of the original title in an Australian edition.
- Christie, Agatha (1981). Ten Little Niggers (in Dutch) (Third edition ed.). Culemborg: Educaboek. ISBN 9011851536.
{{cite book}}
:|edition=
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ignored (|author=
suggested) (help) (Late printing of Dutch translation preserving original English title) - Christie, Agatha (1986). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books. ISBN 0671552228. (Last publication of novel under title "Ten Little Indians")
Notable editions of the play based on the novel
- Christie, Agatha (1944). And Then There Were None: a Play in Three Acts. New York: Samuel French. OCLC 52528030. (First publication of play)
- Christie, Agatha (1946). Ten Little Indians: a Mystery Play in Three Acts. New York, London: Samuel French. OCLC 364920. (First publication of play under "Ten Little Indians" title)
Video game adaptations
- Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None (2005). Directed by Scott Nixon. USA.
External links
- http://www.all-about-agatha-christie.com/and-then-there-were-none.html
- http://www.bookscans.com/Oddities/worst_title.htm
- Blog entry with links about the Gielgud production of the play (2005/2006)
- Spark Notes for book
- The Rhyme
- Early (presumably unauthorised) game on World of Spectrum
- Web page for Burgh Island , the setting of which is used in And Then There Were None and Evil Under the Sun.
References
- ^ a b c d Pendergast, Bruce (2004). Everyman's Guide To The Mysteries Of Agatha Christie. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing. p. 393. ISBN 1412023041.
- ^ Barnard, Robert. A Talent to Deceive – an appreciation of Agatha Christie - Revised edition (Page 206). Fontana Books, 1990. ISBN 0006374743
- ^ http://us.agathachristie.com/site/find_a_story/stories/And_Then_There_Were_None.php?type=fromsearch&pagetype=find }}
- ^ British National Bibliography for 1985. British Library. 1986. ISBN 0-7123-1035-5
- ^ http://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/2013220626/
- ^ British National Bibliography British Library. 1986. ISBN 0-7123-1035-5
- ^ Whitaker's Cumulative Book List for 1977. J. Whitaker and Sons Ltd. 1978. ISBN 0-85021-105-0