AN AGATHA CHRISTIE TRIBUTE THE ENGLISH DUST WRAPPERS

AN AGATHA CHRISTIE TRIBUTE
THE ENGLISH DUST WRAPPERS

This page is intended as a helpful guide to all those who are just setting out on the long and difficult task of collecting Agatha Christie English first editions. Generally the John Lane Bodley Head and Crime Club titles are easy to identify in first edition state. The only firm outside of these two to publish a Christie first edition in hardback was Odhams with "The Hound of Death" in 1933. I blame the difficulty on Odhams for the reprint edition of "Murder in the Mews", many an otherwise blameless bookseller has wrongly described this as the first edition over the years. All the books are dated on the reverse of the title page with two exceptions, "The Mystery of the Blue Train" has a simple "Copyright" and "After the Funeral" is dated on page 192.The only "Oddity" in my list is the "Book Club" edition of "Dumb Witness" which I felt had to be included as a first illustrated edition. Who can resist the four half tone illustrations and , in particular the one of Agatha Christie posing as the victim at the bottom of the stairs.

Where the American title is different to the U.K. it has been noted as has where the U.S. is the "TRUE FIRST" .

This is obviously a work very much in progress. Every cover I currently own is already scanned in as well as a few from various books and periodicals. Copyright clearance would clearly be a complete nightmare to arrange, so can I just crave the indulgence of all artists involved ? If any artist would prefer not to have his work displayed here please E mail me and I will remove the offending picture .

Can I please ask any of you out there with better copies of the jackets or with jackets that are missing from the collection to E mail me Jpeg copies for inclusion . I will put contributor credits for all those that help. Perhaps if I can get this site finished off I can then move on to a general Crime Club/Golden Age site .

This page is a tribute to all those dust wrapper artists whose classic works never graced the walls of a London art gallery.

PAPERBACK FIRST EDITIONS (Under Construction)

PLAYS

COLLINS CRIME CLUB CATALOGUE OF ALL AUTHORS