Books

1st ed thus, octavo, original red cloth boards with (original) title in black lettering on spine, original dustjacket, not price-clipped. Lacks front free endpaper. Small scuffed area rear endpaper. Light offsetting lines from the inner flaps of the dustjacket to the endpapers, otherwise clean.The dustjacket has two light marks near the foot of the spine. The hand on the front of the d.j. has faded almost entirely into the pale cream-coloured background: the rest is bright and clean. Very good condition in like d.j. Scarce. The Agatha Christie novel now known as 'And Then There Were None', first published in 1939, "was originally, notoriously, released serially in the UK under the title Ten Little Niggers. (This was the British music-hall version of the minstrel song.) Even in 1939, this title was considered too offensive for American publication. [.] [the original title] jars, viscerally." Sadie Stein, The Paris Review, 2016. It is remarkable that the book was still being published under this title (and with the racist imagery on the dustjacket) as late as 1972: few copies were published in this edition, and it was withdrawn. Scarce thus, and therefore highly collectable.

One of Agatha Christie's most famous works, 'And Then There Were None' narrates the story of ten strangers invited to a distant island under different pretenses. Methodically, they are killed off according to an old nursery rhyme. With no way to escape and no one else on the island, the survivors quickly realize that the murderer is among them.