Summary Ten people, each with something to hide and something to fear, are invited to a lonely mansion on Indian Island by a host who, surprisingly, fails to appear. On the island they are cut off from everything but each other and the inescapable shadows of their own past lives. One by one, the guests share the darkest secrets of their wicked pasts. And one by one, they start to die…
Year: 1939 Location: England
Cast of characters Dr. Edward George Armstrong, William Henry Blore, Emily Caroline Brent, Vera Elizabeth Claythorne, Sir Thomas Legge, Captain Philip Lombard, General John Macarthur, Inspector Maine, Anthony James Marston, Fred Narracott, Ethel Rogers, Thomas Rogers, Mr. Justice Laurence John Wargrave
Publishing history First published in the UK as ‘Ten Little Niggers’ by William Collins Sons & Co. in London in 1939. First published as ‘And Then There Were None’ by Dodd, Mead & Co. in New York in 1940. Stage: Adapted with a more romantic ending in 1943 by Agatha Christie. It opened in London at St. James Theathre November 17, 1943 titled ‘Ten Little Niggers’ and as ‘Ten Little Indians’ in the US at Broadhurst Theatre in New York City on June 27, 1944. Films: ‘And Then There Were None’, 1945 was the first feature film version and produced in the US by Twentieth Century Fox. The second, ‘Ten Little Indians’, 1965, was by Seven Arts Films in England with the setting moved to a remote mountain top castle in the Austrian Alps. The third film, ‘Ten Little Indians’, 1975, was produced by Avco-Embassy, Inc. with the setting in a remote hotel in the Iranian desert. The fourth, again titled ‘Ten Little Indians’, 1989, was produced by Breton Films who moved the locale to an African safari. The film adaptations all retained the ending of the play, rather than the original of the novel. TV: BBC produced a TV version of the stage adaptation, which aired as a live drama on August 20, 1949, as ‘Ten Little Niggers’.
Notes and reviews One of the most carefully planned of Christie’s mysteries; she herself considered the plot “near-impossible”. “It was so difficult to do that the idea had fascinated me… I wrote the book after a tremendous amount of planning, and I was pleased with what I had made of it.” – Agatha Christie, An Autobiography, 1977. The rhyme comes from a Victorian music hall show song written by Frank Green in 1869, an adaptation in itself of the American comic song, ‘Ten Little Indians’, written by Septimus Winner, published 1868. The author includes the complete song in Chapter 2 of the novel.
Murder methods: Multiple.
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