Book Collecting

My Agatha Christie Collection
By Pat Gulley

Do you collect books? No, I don’t mean just buying tons of books and saving them in boxes—or if you are fortunate enough to have a lot of room in your house---put them up on bookshelves you are constantly buying or building. No, I mean a certain kind of book. Collecting for the sake of collecting, checking out older and older editions if you collect an author who has passed on, or collecting All editions if the author is published by different publishers in different countries, and especially if the titles have been changed.

Me, I have a huge collection of Agatha Christie. (I’ve also now started on Jane Austen; books written about her, and sequels written to continue on with the characters she had created.)

But back to Dame Agatha. I do not have every book she’s written. Some I’ve had and now find I don’t, so I scour book stores for the older editions and look for the British and Australian editions, and double that if there was a title change.

And how ‘bout those title changes? It really does make collecting Agatha’s books interesting, even though one wonders why. For some reason back in the 50s and 60s American publishers felt they had to change the titles. I don’t know if it was for legal reasons, probably not, but for some reason they didn’t think Americans would like the British titles. What’s the difference between Murder On The Calais Coach and Murder On The Orient Express? No possibility that Americans would know where Calais is? Wouldn’t Orient Express give the false impression that the train was in Asia???? Or did they think, for some reason, that the Orient Express Train, which had already been discontinued, was famous enough? I do understand And Then There Were None for Ten Little N---ers, which eventually became Ten Little Indians. But why did The Patriotic Murders become One, Two, Buckle My Shoe and Overdose Of Death? Too weird!

And when I say older editions, I do not mean collector or antique editions that could cost in the hundreds of dollars. No, I just look for the oldest edition date I can find. I definitely do not like the brand new ones because too often, the wording has been changed to reflect modern usage. A daydream of mine is to be garage sailing and come across a 1920 edition of The Mysterious Affair At Styles.

The ones that are giving me a heck of a time are her short story collections, because even though there are some that she put together herself, the fact is that her publishers worldwide also put together her short stories and gave these collections---yes, you guessed it—new titles. So, I’ve just gone to having a list of the short stories and making sure I’ve got them all and not caring about a collection that may only have stories I already own. (Have you assumed by now, I’m not bothering with short stories too much? What a headache.) Oh, but then we have to move on to her plays and their collection into book form.

My treasured books of Agatha’s are the odd ones like The Mysterious Mr. Quin and Mr. Parker Pyne, two characters that did not become popular like Poirot. And I do have a copy of The Big Four, an attempt at master-criminal-of-the-world sort of thing, which is not very good.

I keep track of this with my copy of An Agatha Christie Chronology by Nancy Blue Wynne--a book I wish I’d had the ability to research and write. It is in taters, but I couldn’t face buying a new one because it is annotated up the wazzzzzooooo. Thank heavens for paper clips and rubberbands! Also, http://agathachristie.com/ is a very interesting site for information on Christie and especially all the sidekicks. Frankly, I think the sidekicks are great stories all on their own. But that’s another blog.

So do you collect books? Yes, let’s stick to books here, because I know what ‘collect anything’ can lead to, just in my own house alone! What books do you collect?

A Magnificent Assembly of Liars

By Martha Reed

I found an item listed on eBay recently that I decided I had to have and since I’ve been working like a dog lately I decided to treat myself and actually buy it. It’s a 1931 edition of My Story by Mary Roberts Rinehart and I find myself looking forward to reading it although I usually cast a wary eye on autobiographies because I always wonder about the motivation that made an author want to write one.

My first thought whenever I pick up a fiction author’s autobiography is why would the author even want to publish a book of fact? My follow up question is how much of this material can I trust as fact when I know first hand how the mind of a fiction writer works and editing for content is a major part of it? As I handle the book, I wonder: how much of this can I take as gospel when I know that the author is presenting to the world their unique and personal take on the arbitrary subject of how they lived their life?

I only ask this question because I know they lie.

Dame Agatha Christie skipped an important chapter in her autobiography when she forgot to mention that she disappeared for eleven days in 1926 after her husband Archie asked for a divorce. Her disappearance resulted in a massive national manhunt until Agatha turned up in a Yorkshire hotel claiming to suffer from amnesia. At the time, some folks considered this a publicity stunt while others claim she was trying to set Archie up for her murder as an act of revenge. Sounds like a fiction writer to me!

Dorothy L. Sayers hid an illegitimate son from her family and friends who only learned of John Anthony’s existence after her death in 1957. Imagine the shock of opening the door to a twenty-year old young man who says: “Hello. I’m Dorothy’s son.”


In 1947, Mary Roberts Rinehart was involved in a bizarre personal drama. She was reading in her library when her chef Reyes came in, objecting to her orders. Pulling out a gun, he shot her a point blank range. The gun misfired and Rinehart ran for help. A young man was standing at the door, looking for work. “Young man,” Rinehart reportedly said, “You’ll have to come back later. There is a man here trying to kill me.” Wielding a carving knife in each hand, the enraged chef attacked her again before being subdued by the other servants. Reyes was arrested and hung himself in his cell. Rinehart paid for the funeral.

I leave it to you to imagine his motivation.

To Marple or not to Marples, Is Not The Question. Which is?

By Pat Gulley

And so PBS Masterpiece Mystery has finished another version of Miss Marple, though why they had to redo so many of the stories the previous two had already done escapes my reasoning. Of course, why they add Poirot and Miss Marple to stories that were never theirs to begin with is also a big question, but that’s for another time.

Which Miss Marple is your favorite? Mine is Joan Hickson because to me she looks the most like the one Agatha Christie created and wrote about. Fluffy, small, frail looking, and blustery in speech, though she always seemed to make herself clear—maybe not to the detectives—but certainly to us. She looked like every little old lady everyone looks at once or twice in their lives and thinks: senile, dim, gaga, helpless, or desperately in need of our assistance moving across the room. And as we soon learned when reading Miss Marple stories: Dump, fool us! And though Joan didn’t play her to the end when she was forbidden any kind of heavy activity like her gardening, we knew she’d get there with that clever mind of hers still as sharp as ever.

I should clarify my statement by saying I never saw Barbara Mullen or Grace Fields, and I don’t expect there will ever be a way of seeing Barbara’s performance, though maybe, just maybe Netflix might come up with a copy of the 1956 version of A Murder Is Announced with Gracie Fields from Goodyear Television Playhouse. It could happen. Googling Goodyear Playhouse brought up a lot of facts, but no pictures or a place to see the adaptation preformed.
Margaret Rutherford’s characterization was either her own idea or some scriptwriter’s idea of what the ignorant public expected. The dim witted sidekick doing all the grunt work apparently was mandatory because the only detectives we would recognize was in the Sherlock Holmes vain. Angela Lansbury and Helen Hayes did fair jobs, but they were offered as elderly women of the time, with all that went with the current sensibility, not to mention what suited the style and looks of the actress.

Geraldine McEwan did a pretty good job, though the back story added to Marple’s past stunk to high heaven for me because Agatha told us about Jane’s upbringing and there was no love affair. Probably in keeping with the current assumption that insists the ignorant public requires some sex in every story they see on TV or in the movies. And though adding Tommy and Tuppence in later life into one of Geraldine’s stories was interesting, I’m sure you are all aware of the fact that it is Miss Marple who was actually added into that Tommy and Tuppence story. So, while we are at it, just why did Geraldine’s stories all seem to be a combination of two books? Who gives free reign to writers to do that? Or is it the production company that makes them do it? Inquiring minds want to know! At least major Agatha fans do. (See another time above.)

And now we have Julia McKenzie. She looks straight out of the 50s, in her tidy hat and tweed suit, but much younger than the Jane Marple of the books. The thing that bothered me about most of Julia’s stories is that she seemed to have been dropped into them out of the blue. No rhyme or reason for her to be there in the room or stay there. In one, she was hiding behind a shutter and sneakily listening. And the fact that the stories chosen were all ones we’ve seen several times before, we knew they could have been done better. So they weren’t exactly fun to watch. Agatha wrote some good stories for the 50s and 60s (she took her stories straight out of the headlines of the day, you know) so McKenzie should be able to do a tolerable job for the times. I wish they’d do Third Girl—it’s about roommates—definitely one of my favorites because it reminds me of my time in NYC with roommates. So we’ll see, but she isn’t replacing Joan Hickson anytime soon for me.

Here’s a list of the Marples.

Julia McKenzie 2009
Geraldine McEwan 2004
Joan Hickson 1984-1992
Gracie Fields 1956
Helen Hayes 83 85
Angela Lansbury 80
Margaret Rutherford early 50s?
Barbara Mullen 1949, so said Mystery Scene Magazine.

Which is your favorite, and why?