Death in the Clouds

Lot 33
28.09.2023 13:00UTC +00:00
Classic
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£ 12 600
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1016525
Lot 33 | Death in the Clouds
Estimate value
£ 3 000 – 5 000
Death in the Clouds

Agatha Christie

CHRISTIE, Agatha (1890-1976). Death in the Clouds. London: for The Crime Club by Collins, 1935.



Presentation copy of the first UK edition in the rare dust-jacket. Inscribed by the author to her secretary, amanuensis and close friend Charlotte ‘Carlo’ Fisher: ‘Carlo with love from Agatha.’ A wonderful association copy. Agatha Christie started writing Death in the Clouds in 1934, probably in Beirut while on her way to Syria with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan. The mystery centres on a passenger who is murdered on a flight from Le Bourget to Croydon and features the detective Hercule Poirot and Chief Inspector Japp. ‘Agatha's joke about dutiful Englishmen who abandon sick wives was not the only entertainment she and Max had from this book, for it also reflects a private joke they shared about the deficiencies of the airline services that were just being established’ (Janet Morgan, Agatha Christie, 1984). Hubin p. 79.



Octavo. 4 pages of publisher’s advertisements at end. Original orange cloth, spine lettered in black (very minor spotting to preliminary and final text leaves, free endpapers lightly browned with faint offsetting from dust-jacket, spine faded, top of edge of boards slightly dust-stained, edges slightly spotted, spine ends and corners gently bumped); original pictorial dust-jacket supplied from another copy (split along folds with some partial tape repairs, upper flap with restoration and smudges of purple ink date stamps, jacket chipped and frayed at edges and small loss at ends of spine and folds, rather creased and rubbed, lower panel somewhat dust-stained). Provenance: Charlotte ‘Carlo’ Fisher (1895-1976, secretary, amanuensis and close friend of Agatha Christie; presentation inscription by the author on front free endpaper, and with Fisher’s posthumous book label).

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