Chapter 13
Agatha Christie’s Booklists
‘I read enormous quantities of books . . . ’
A look at some of the booklists that Agatha Christie’s scribbled down in her Notebooks confirms that her interests were eclectic and wide-ranging. While crime novels make up a proportion of each list, the appearance of historical novels, biography, history, philosophy, short stories and very British novels confirm a catholic taste. Interestingly, the crime fiction titles venture into areas other than her own sphere. Simenon’s Maigret and the American noir, Detour, as well as the detective novels of some of her ‘rivals’ – Dorothy L. Sayers, John Dickson Carr, Michael Innes and Elizabeth Ferrars – make for an assorted collection. Apart from the short ‘Books read and liked’ list below, it is difficult to tell what these lists represent. They may be titles to be read, to recommend, or even to give as presents. I opt for the first possibility; the consistent dates seem to indicate that the lists were drawn from publishers’ catalogues of forthcoming titles. And the evidence of the Notebooks suggests that an orderly list of ‘Books Read and to be Recommended’ would be out of keeping with the overall approach.
The following pages are a selection of booklists reproduced from the Notebooks. In some cases tracking down the title proved impossible, due usually to an illegible or incorrect word, or words; these I have omitted. Where a title is ambiguous, for example The Clock Strikes Twelve from the final selection, I have taken the publication nearest to the year of the surrounding titles.
The following short list from Notebook 39 appears on a half-page in the middle of the plotting for Evil under the Sun. All of the titles date from 1938/9 and this timeline tallies with the receipt of that manuscript by her agent in February 1939:
Booklist
The Valiant Woman Sheila Royde Smith
They Wanted to Live Cecil Roberts
Death in Five Boxes [Carter Dickson]
Revue Beverly Nichols
The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe [Erle Stanley Gardner]
Case with No Conclusion [Leo Bruce]
Half of the titles are crime novels – a Perry Mason novel by Erle Stanley Gardner, a Sergeant Beef novel by Leo Bruce and a John Dickson Carr writing under his alter ego Carter Dickson. Dickson Carr’s The Burning Court is a clue in Chapter 8 i of Evil under the Sun. Three very British novels make up the rest of the list.
Also from the same period, but this time from the opening page of Notebook 62, the next list contains only one crime title, from fellow crime queen Ngaio Marsh. Perhaps significantly, Overture to Death was Marsh’s first title for Collins Crime Club. The page following this has the corrections for Curtain so, again, the timeline is correct. One minor mystery on this list is the appearance of a novel with a background of the American car industry, F O B Detroit.
Books read and liked
The Long Valley [John Steinbeck, 1938]
F O B Detroit [Wessel Smitter, 1938]
Overture to Death [Ngaio Marsh, 1939]
Black Narcissus [Rumer Godden, 1939]
The Patriot [Pearl S. Buck, 1939]
The Woman in the Hall [Marguerite Stern, 1939]
The Power and the Glory [Graham Greene, 1940]
Notebook 56 has a listing of historical novels, many of them titles from the previous century and some of them well-known classics – The Black Arrow, Ivanhoe and Kidnapped; others – Henty and Weyman – are mentioned specifically in Christie’s Autobiography. Some of these titles are on the shelves of Greenway House to this day:
Historical Novels . . . Penguin Series
Unknown to History (Elizabethan) [Charlotte M. Yonge?]
Shadow of a Throne (French Revolution and Directory) [F.W.
Hayes?]
In the Reign of Terror ([G.A.] Henty)
Cat of Bubastes (Henty)
In the King’s Name [George] Manville Fenn
Under the Red Robe
The Red Cockade Stanley Weyman
The Castle Inn
The Long Night
One Last Hope (Seton Merrimen)
Kidnapped ([R.L.] Stevenson)
The Black Arrow (War of Roses)
Dickon (Marjorie Bowen)
Ivanhoe ([Walter] Scott)
Just inside the cover of Notebook 52 we find the following list of reading material, all dating from 1961/2. This date corresponds with the contents of the Notebook, which contains the notes for The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and The Clocks. I have rearranged the titles for ease of discussion but am unable to explain the ‘+’ or ‘++.’ ‘D’ seems to indicate that the title is a detective/crime novel – Waugh, Payne, Garve, Innes; and the ‘?’ probably indicates uncertainty on the part of Christie. HB indicates hardback, but why some titles are crossed through and some not remains a mystery (Received, Read, Enjoyed, perhaps?). Where an author’s name has not been included in the Notebook I have inserted it, using the 1961/2 guideline where there is ambiguity.
The first five titles are crime novels, the Garve and Blake titles from the Crime Club series, while Waugh is an American crime writer.
+ D The Nose on my Face [Laurence Payne]
+ D The House of Soldiers [Andrew Garve]
D Silence Observed [Michael Innes]
D The Worm of Death (Nic[holas]Blake)
D The Night it Rained (?) [Hilary Waugh]
The non-fiction titles are mainly biography (Stalin, Cranmer, Ivan the Great), but travel (Durrell) and true crime (Airline Detective) also feature:
HB Books
HB Morning Glory (Autobiog) [Mary Motley]
HB Stalin [Isaac Deutscher]
Thomas Cranmer[Jasper Ridley]
HB Ivan the Great of Moscow [J.L.I. Fennell]
Every Night and All (Glasgow) [William Miller]
George(Emlyn Williams Autob)
(Legends etc .) The Twelve Days of Christmas [a Christmas miscellany by Miles and John Hadfield]
+ Airline Detective (Useful?) [Donald Fish; published by Collins]
+ The Whispering Land(G. Durrell)
The list of novels and short stories ranges from the well-known – Muriel Spark and Paul Gallico – to the forgotten – Morel and Brent – but also includes the challenging – Calvino and Narayan:
++ The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie(M. Spark)
Miss Bagshot Goes to Tibet [Anne Telscombe]
Confessions of a Story Teller (Paul Gallico)
+ Exit [Peter Ludwig Brent]
Autumn Fair [Dighton Morel]
? History Manila Galleon [F. Van Wyck Mason]
+ The Borders of Barbarism [Eric Williams]
+ The Non-existent Knight [Italo Calvino – two short novels; published by Collins]
The Man Eater of Malqudi [R.K. Narayan]
The Far Road [George Johnston; published by Collins]
+ Roll of Honour (Eric Linklater)
? SS Spine Chillers [ed. by Elizabeth Lee]
The heading on the following titles (‘to buy?’) would seem to indicate that the earlier titles were to be supplied, perhaps by Collins. The sole non-fiction title was one written for those with little scientific knowledge to help them understand new scientific discoveries; and Christie was in her seventies.
Penguins to buy?
Fire Burn (John Dickson Carr)
Medicine Today [David Margerson]
The Wild Palms W. Faulkner
Pigeon Pie (Nancy Mitford)
The following is a two-page list from Notebook 35 and the titles (with one inexplicable exception) date from 1939–40. I reproduce them complete with crossings out and unexplained Xs but I have inserted explanatory notes and, where necessary, accurate titles, and have rearranged them for ease of discussion.
All of the following are 1939 crime titles by a mixture of US (Rawson, Chambers) and UK (Michael Innes, E.R. Punshon) writers, chosen from the well-known (Sayers) and the forgotten (Armstrong, Fethaland). Only Eberhart was a fellow Crime Club author.
Murder at Charters [John Fethaland]
Brief Return [Eberhart]
Murder in Stained Glass [Margaret Armstrong]
Murder Abroad (Punshon)
D Stop Press (Innes)
D Some Day I’ll Kill You ([Dana] Chambers)
D Detour(Tough American) [Goldsmith]
In the Teeth of the Evidence(D. Sayers)
+ The Footprints on the Ceiling (Merlini) [Clayton Rawson]
Also included is an eclectic selection of novels and short stories from the same year:
Flight from a Lady ([A.G.] MacDonnell)
+ Before Lunch (Angela Thirkell)
+ My American (Stella Gibbon[s])
+ The Nazarene [Sholem Asch]
+ Household Gods (Winifred Duke)
The Dark Star [March Cost]
John Arnison [Introducing the Arnisons] (Edward Thompson)
The Death Guard (Wellesian fantasy) [Philip Chadwick]
Nanking Road (Vicki Baum)
The Ghost of a Rose [Norman Davey]
The Temple of Costly Experience [Daniele Vare]
Twenty-four Short Stories (Graham Greene – James Laver)
By the Waters of Babylon(R. Neumann)
And scattered in between are some non-fiction titles, a miscellany of music, art, travel, biography and history:
Ancient Greece ([Stanley] Casson)
Caroline of England [Peter Quennell]
Escape with Me (Osbert Sitwell)
Portrait of Padrewsky [The Paderewski Memoirs]
Dismembered Masterpieces [Thomas Bodkin 1945, about the restoration of damaged paintings]
Perhaps because the other books were to be supplied, a 1939 book by T.S. Eliot has a specific note:
Buy The Idea of a Christian Society
The opposite page of the same Notebook lists 1940 titles, including one by Crime Club author Elizabeth Ferrars and a slightly incorrect Maigret title. The third title below seems to be a collection of 14 ghost stories rather than the Miss Silver detective novel of the same name, which was not published until 1945.
Give a Corpse a Bad Name [Ferrars]
Maigret Goes [ Travels] South [Simenon]
The Clock Strikes Twelve [Wakefield]
Mr Skeffington [Elizabeth Von Arnim]
Maid no More [Helen Simpson]
Idle Apprentice [Joanna Cannan]
Good Night, Sweet Ladies [S. Frazer]
The Edge of Running Water [William Sloane]