Some readers have questioned my assertion, in yesterday’s column, that
Agatha Christie published a book with the n-word in the title. Well, the
used-book website Abebooks.com lists 132 copies of that book under that
title! There is, in fact, a tangled story here, which someone with more
patience than I have might un-tangle. When the Christie novel came out in
Britain in 1939 it had the n-word title. Issued in the USA the following
year, the title was, as I said, changed to “And Then There Were None,”
because the n-word was already considered disgraceful by Americans, at any
rate the novel-reading classes. It kept the original title in England until
well into the 1960s, though — my mother, a keen reader of detective
fiction, owned a copy. Then modern sensibilities kicked in and the British
publisher changed the title to “Ten Little Indians.” Abebooks lists 156
books with that title, the earliest dated 1966. To further confuse things,
the book was made into a play early on–at latest 1944–and the play was
produced under all three titles. There was also at least one movie…