THE FINAL POIROT NOVEL INSCRIBED TO HER PUBLISHER
Curtain
Dodd Mead 1975.
First American edition. Original quarter cloth over boards in printed dustwrapper. Author's presentation copy, inscribed to her American publisher on the day of publication, "Jonathan Dodd from Agatha Christie 15 October 1975". A near fine copy in a near fine dustwrapper with just a trace of wear to the spine ends.
Curtain was the final Poirot novel to be published, but the idea for the novel had occured to Christie arround 1935 and was principally written in the 1940s, with the intention of leaving instructions for it to be published after she died. With rapidly declining health, Christie decided to publish it in late in 1975, just months, as it turned out, before her death in January 1976.
With the Collins edition due out at the end of September, Jonathan Dodd, then director of publishing at Christie's US publishers, Dodd Mead, pulled a publicity masterstroke, by persuading the New York Times to publish a front page spoof obituary of Hercule Poirot, the only time the NY Times has published an obituary of a fictitious character.
"His death was confirmed by Dodd, Mead, Dame Agatha's publishers, who will put out 'Curtain,' the novel that chronicles his last days, on Oct. 15...
...there had been many rumors to the effect that Dame Agatha had locked up two manuscripts one a Poirot and one a Marplein a vault and that they were not to be published until her death. Jonathan Dodd, of Dodd, Mead, said that the Poirot was the one now being published." - (NY Times 6 August 1975)
Due to Christie's ill health and the slight window between publication and her death, inscribed copies of Curtain are very scarce and seldom appear in commerce. We have seen only one other in twenty years.
Stock ID: 38124
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