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Charles Osborne. The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie: A biographical companion to the works of Agatha Christie
Copyright
Contents
PREFACE
1 Appearance and Disappearance
2 The Vintage Years
3 War and Peace
4 ‘The Mousetrap’ and After
5 Towards the Last Cases
PLATE SECTION
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
NOTES. PREFACE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
ILLUSTRATION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
THE AGATHA CHRISTIE COLLECTION
1 The Mysterious Affair at Styles
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Poirot Investigates POIROT SHORT STORIES (1924)
One of Hercule Poirot’s earliest fans was Bruce Ingram, editor of the London illustrated weekly, The Sketch. Ingram got in touch with Agatha Christie to suggest that she should write a series of Hercule Poirot stories for his magazine, and a thrilled and delighted Agatha agreed. She was not entirely pleased with the drawing of Hercule Poirot which The Sketch commissioned to accompany the first of the stories: it was not unlike her idea of Poirot but it made him look a little too smart and dandified. Agatha Christie wrote eight stories, and at first it was thought that eight would be sufficient. However, it was eventually decided to extend the series to twelve, and the author had to produce another four rather too hastily. When the series of stories began, in the 7 March 1923 issue of The Sketch, it was accompanied by a page of photographs of ‘The Maker of “The Grey Cells of M. Poirot” ’, showing her at home with her daughter, in her drawing-room, on the telephone, at her writing table, at work with her typewriter and so on. The author of ‘the thrilling set of detective yarns’ made it clear to The Bodley Head that she thought they should publish them quickly as a volume of stories, while the publicity from their appearance in The Sketch and from the serialization of The Man in the Brown Suit in the London Evening News was still current. The Bodley Head agreed, and the stories were collected in a volume which, at first, it was intended should be called The Grey Cells of Monsieur Poirot, but which, in due course, appeared as Poirot Investigates. The volume was also published in the United States (by Dodd, Mead & Co, who remain Agatha Christie’s American hardback publishers), but there is a discrepancy between the British and American editions. The British volume consisted of eleven stories while the American edition contained fourteen. (The three extra stories, ‘The Lost Mine’, ‘The Chocolate Box’ and ‘The Veiled Lady’ eventually appeared in Great Britain, along with several other stories, fifty years later in Poirot’s Early Cases. ‘The Veiled Lady’ was also published, together with two other stories, in Poirot Lends a Hand [1946: see p. 212].)
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