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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

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£ 56 700
Auction dateClassic
28.09.2023 13:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 1016487
Lot 21 | The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Agatha Christie

CHRISTIE, Agatha (1890-1976). The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. London: W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1926.



‘The ultimate detective novel’ (Thompson): presentation copy of the first edition, inscribed to the author’s close friend and secretary Charlotte ‘Carlo’ Fisher: ‘Miss Fisher from Agatha Christie May. 1926. In memory of Commas, Colons & full stops!’. A superb association copy commemorating the work involved in producing this masterpiece. No presentation copy of this work has ever previously appeared at auction (RBH). A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone.



In 1924 Christie advertised a position for someone to act as both a governess for her five year old daughter Rosalind and as a secretary and typist. Charlotte Fisher (known later as ‘Carlo’), applied and was taken on by Christie. ‘She was young, highly intelligent, the daughter of an Edinburgh chaplain and - as one of her nieces described her – “a very splendid person” […] Charlotte also commanded instant respect from Rosalind and, despite the ten year age gap, got along very well with Agatha’ (L. Thompson, Agatha Christie, 2007, p. 165). The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) and And Then There Were None (1939) are both dedicated to Carlo; the latter also dedicated to her sister Mary Fisher. Christie considered Carlo and Mary Fisher as among her most loyal friends who had stood by her in the aftermath of her disappearance in 1926, and both were witnesses at her marriage to Max Mallowan in 1930.



The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is Christie’s most famous and most controversial work, and ‘rests upon the most elegant of all twists […] This twist is not merely a function of plot: it puts the whole concept of detective fiction on an armature and sculpts it into a dazzling new shape’. Hubin p. 80; Keating, Crime and Mystery, the 100 Best Books, 12; Thompson, L. Agatha Christie: An English Mystery, 2007.



Octavo. (Occasional spotting.) Original blue cloth, titled to spine and upper board in orange (spine faded and just cocked, slightly chipped at head and foot of spine, extremities a trifle rubbed); original dust-jacket supplied from another copy (professional repairs to folds, spine ends and a few tears or abrasions with minor loss to printed areas supplied with ink facsimile); custom cloth box. Provenance: Charlotte ‘Carlo’ Fisher (1895-1976, secretary, amanuensis and close personal friend of Agatha Christie; presentation inscription from the author on front free endpaper and posthumous book label).

Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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28.09.2023 – 28.09.2023
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