170-677: And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie , who described it as the most difficult of her books to write. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939, as Ten Little Niggers , after an 1869 minstrel song that serves as a major plot element. The US edition was released in January 1940 with the title And Then There Were None , taken from
340-462: A detective (such as Sherlock Holmes ), who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction . Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit . Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism. Mystery fiction can involve
510-594: A racially loaded ethnic slur or insult compared to the contemporaneous culture in the United Kingdom. The serialized version appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in seven parts from 20 May (Volume 211, Number 47) to 1 July 1939 (Volume 212, Number 1) with illustrations by Henry Raleigh, and the book was published in January 1940 by Dodd, Mead and Company for $ 2. In the original UK novel, and in succeeding publications until 1985, all references to "Indians" or "Soldiers" were originally "Nigger", including
680-438: A supernatural mystery in which the solution does not have to be logical and even in which there is no crime involved. This usage was common in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, whose titles such as Dime Mystery , Thrilling Mystery , and Spicy Mystery offered what were then described as complicated to solve and weird stories: supernatural horror in the vein of Grand Guignol . That contrasted with parallel titles of
850-406: A balloon and wait for the world to rotate below. Highly musical and unable to sit still, they constantly contorted their bodies wildly while singing. Tambo and Bones's simple-mindedness and lack of sophistication were highlighted by pairing them with a straight man master of ceremonies called the interlocutor . This character, although usually in blackface, spoke in aristocratic English and used
1020-404: A bear-shaped marble clock that falls from Vera's window sill. Vera and Lombard find Armstrong's drowned body washed up on the beach, and each concludes the other must be responsible. Vera suggests moving Armstrong's body, and then grabs Lombard's gun and shoots him dead. Believing she is now safe, Vera returns to the house, only to find a noose and chair set up in her room. Recalling the last line of
1190-716: A common target for male characters, although she usually proved capricious and elusive. After the Civil War, the wench emerged as the most important specialist role in the minstrel troupe; men could alternately be titillated and disgusted, while women could admire the illusion and high fashion. The role was most strongly associated with the song " Miss Lucy Long ", so the character many times bore that name. Actress Olive Logan commented that some actors were "marvelously well fitted by nature for it, having well-defined soprano voices, plump shoulders, beardless faces, and tiny hands and feet." Many of these actors were teen-aged boys. In contrast
1360-708: A concert at the New York Bowery Amphitheatre , calling themselves the Virginia Minstrels . The minstrel show as a complete evening's entertainment was born. The show had little structure. The four sat in a semicircle, played songs, and traded wisecracks. One gave a stump speech in dialect, and they ended with a lively plantation song. The term minstrel had previously been reserved for traveling white singing groups, but Emmett and company made it synonymous with blackface performance, and by using it, signalled that they were reaching out to
1530-401: A crime scene with no indication as to how the intruder could have entered or left, i.e., a locked room. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax. Minstrel show The minstrel show , also called minstrelsy ,
1700-603: A cruel and inhuman institution. However, in the 1850s, minstrelsy became more pro-slavery as political and satirical content was toned down or removed entirely. Most minstrels projected a greatly romanticized and exaggerated image of black life with cheerful, simple slaves always ready to sing and dance and to please their masters. (Less frequently, the masters cruelly split up black lovers or sexually assaulted black women.) The lyrics and dialogue were generally racist, satiric, and largely white in origin. Songs about slaves yearning to return to their masters were plentiful. Figures like
1870-440: A difficult profession. When playing Southern towns, performers had to stay in character off stage, dressed in ragged "slave clothes" and perpetually smiling. Troupes left town quickly after each performance, and some had so much trouble securing lodging that they hired whole trains or had custom sleeping cars built, complete with hidden compartments to hide in should things turn ugly. Even these were no haven, as whites sometimes used
SECTION 10
#17328012886602040-406: A division of Crosstown Publications. The detective fiction author Ellery Queen ( pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee ) is also credited with continuing interest in mystery fiction. Interest in mystery fiction continues to this day partly because of various television shows which have used mystery themes and the many juvenile and adult novels which continue to be published. There
2210-719: A drunken black man in a 1769 staging of The Padlock . Later research by Cockrell and others disputes this claim. Eventually, similar performers appeared in entr'actes in New York City theaters and other venues such as taverns and circuses. As a result, the blackface " Sambo " character came to supplant the "tall-tale-telling Yankee " and "frontiersman" character-types in popularity, and white actors such as Charles Mathews , George Washington Dixon , and Edwin Forrest began to build reputations as blackface performers. Author Constance Rourke even claimed that Forrest's impression
2380-417: A graver ill than the treatment of black slaves—or by a less class-conscious rhetoric of "productive" versus "unproductive" elements of society. On the other hand, views on slavery were fairly evenly presented in minstrelsy, and some songs even suggested the creation of a coalition of working blacks and whites to end the institution. Among the appeals and racial stereotypes of early blackface performance were
2550-483: A hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little Soldier Boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little Soldier Boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little Soldier Boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little Soldier Boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there
2720-414: A mere three troupes dominated the scene. A key cause was rising salary costs, which for the leading companies had risen from $ 400 a week in the 1860s to $ 2500 a week in 1912, far too high to be profitable in most cases, especially with the rise of motion pictures, which could easily outcompete the touring minstrel shows on ticket prices. Small companies and amateurs carried the traditional minstrel show into
2890-426: A much larger vocabulary. The humor of these exchanges came from the misunderstandings on the part of the endmen when talking to the interlocutor: Tambo and Bones were favorites of the audience, and their repartee with the interlocutor was for many the best part of the show. There was an element of laughing with them for the audience, as they frequently made light of the interlocutor's grandiose ways. The interlocutor
3060-519: A mystery to be solved, clues , red herrings , some plot twists along the way and a detective denouement , but differs on several points. Most of the Sherlock Holmes stories feature no suspects at all, while mystery fiction, in contrast, features a large number of them. As noted, detective stories feature professional and retired detectives, while mystery fiction almost exclusively features amateur detectives. Finally, detective stories focus on
3230-595: A new angle on the investigation, so as to bring about a final outcome different from the one originally devised by the investigators. In the legal thriller, court proceedings play a very active, if not to say decisive part in a case reaching its ultimate solution. Erle Stanley Gardner popularized the courtroom novel in the 20th century with his Perry Mason series. Contemporary authors of legal thrillers include Michael Connelly , Linda Fairstein , John Grisham , John Lescroart , Paul Levine , Lisa Scottoline and Scott Turow . Many detective stories have police officers as
3400-612: A new, middle-class audience. The Herald wrote that the production was "entirely exempt from the vulgarities and other objectionable features, which have hitherto characterized Negro extravaganzas." In 1845, the Ethiopian Serenaders purged their show of low humor and surpassed the Virginia Minstrels in popularity. Shortly thereafter, Edwin Pearce Christy founded Christy's Minstrels , combining
3570-418: A night watchman at best. Naturally, the constable would be aware of every individual in the town, and crimes were either solved quickly or left unsolved entirely. As people began to crowd into cities, police forces became institutionalized, and the need for detectives was realized – thus the mystery novel arose. An early work of modern mystery fiction, Das Fräulein von Scuderi by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1819),
SECTION 20
#17328012886603740-401: A pattern that had been pioneered by Rice, minstrelsy united workers and "class superiors" against a common black enemy, symbolized especially by the character of the black dandy. In this same period, the class-conscious but racially inclusive rhetoric of " wage slavery " was largely supplanted by a racist one of "white slavery". This suggested that the abuses against northern factory workers were
3910-412: A plot that strongly matches that of Christie's later novel, including a recorded voice announcing to the guests that their sins will be visited upon them by death. The Invisible Host was adapted as the 1930 Broadway play The Ninth Guest by Owen Davis , which itself was adapted as the 1934 film The Ninth Guest . There is no evidence Christie saw either the play (which had a brief run on Broadway) or
4080-534: A repertoire drawing heavily on Shakespeare. A rival theater company paid people to "riot" and cause disturbances at the theater, and it was shut down by the police when neighbors complained of the commotion. White, working-class Northerners could identify with the characters portrayed in early blackface performances. This coincided with the rise of groups struggling for workingman's nativism and pro-Southern causes, and faux black performances came to confirm pre-existing racist concepts and to establish new ones. Following
4250-497: A rhapsodic review in The Observer 's issue of 5 November 1939 which began, "No wonder Agatha Christie's latest has sent her publishers into a vatic trance. We will refrain, however, from any invidious comparisons with Roger Ackroyd and be content with saying that Ten Little Niggers is one of the very best, most genuinely bewildering Christies yet written. We will also have to refrain from reviewing it thoroughly, as it
4420-623: A rhyme so macabre and distressing one doesn't hear it now outside of the Agatha Christie context." She felt that the original title of the novel in the UK, seen now, "jars, viscerally". And Then There Were None is the best-selling crime novel of all time, and made Agatha Christie the best-selling novelist, according to the Agatha Christie Estate. It is Christie's best-selling novel, with more than 100 million copies sold; it
4590-408: A savage bloodlust, contradictory impulses he had satisfied by becoming a judge and sentencing criminals to death. After a terminal medical diagnosis, he decided to mete out his version of justice to individuals he considered had escaped legal punishment. He hired Morris to make the arrangements, then tricked him into overdosing. Posing as one of the invited guests, he included a charge against himself in
4760-474: A send-up of a popular play. Minstrel songs and sketches featured several stock characters, most popularly the slave and the dandy. These were further divided into sub-archetypes such as the mammy , her counterpart the old darky , the provocative mulatto wench, and the black soldier. Minstrels claimed that their songs and dances were authentically black, although the extent of the genuine black influence remains debated. Spirituals (known as jubilees ) entered
4930-400: A similar list Mystery Writers of America ranked the novel 10th. In September 2015, to mark her 125th birthday, And Then There Were None was named the "World's Favourite Christie" in a vote sponsored by the author's estate. In the "Binge!" article of Entertainment Weekly Issue #1343-44 (26 December 2014–3 January 2015), the writers picked And Then There Were None as an "EW favorite" on
5100-498: A small part of the repertoire. This effect was amplified as minstrelsy featuring black performers took off in its own right and stressed its connection to the old plantations. The main target of criticism was the moral decay of the urbanized North. Cities were painted as corrupt, as homes to unjust poverty, and as dens of "city slickers" who lay in wait to prey upon new arrivals. Minstrels stressed traditional family life; stories told of reunification between mothers and sons thought dead in
5270-450: A sociological bent, exploring the meaning of his characters' places in society and the impact society had on people. Full of commentary and clipped prose, his books were more intimate than those of his predecessors, dramatizing that crime can happen in one's own living room. The PI novel was a male-dominated field in which female authors seldom found publication until Marcia Muller , Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton were finally published in
And Then There Were None - Misplaced Pages Continue
5440-455: A solution achieved by intellect or intuition rather than police procedure, with order restored in the end, honorable characters, and a setting in a closed community. The murders are often committed by less violent tools such as poison and the wounds inflicted are rarely if ever used as clues. The writers who innovated and popularized the genre include Agatha Christie , Dorothy L. Sayers and Elizabeth Daly . The legal thriller or courtroom novel
5610-514: A stir in variety shows, and Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels ran with the idea, first performing in 1870 in skimpy costumes and tights, the scantily clad women being the real attraction. Their success gave rise to at least 11 all-female troupes by 1871, one of which did away with blackface altogether. Ultimately, the girlie show emerged as a form in its own right. Mainstream minstrelsy continued to emphasize its propriety and "fun without vulgarity", but traditional troupes adopted some of these elements in
5780-435: A thrilling 'otherness', a place where revelations about the 'dark side' of the English would be appropriate". Light goes on to say that "Christie's location [the island] is both more domesticated and privatised, taking for granted the construction of racial fears woven into psychic life as early as the nursery." Speaking of the "widely known" 1945 film , Stein added that "we're merely faced with fantastic amounts of violence, and
5950-516: A woman with "lips so large a lover could not kiss them all at once". They had huge feet and preferred "possum" and "coon" to more civilized fare. Minstrel characters were often described in animalistic terms, with "wool" instead of hair, "bleating" like sheep, and having "darky cubs" instead of children. Other claims were that blacks had to drink ink when they got sick "to restore their color" and that they had to file their hair rather than cut it. They were inherently musical, dancing and frolicking through
6120-403: Is Christie's adaptation of the story for the stage. She and the producers agreed that audiences might not flock to a tale with such a grim ending as the novel, nor would it work well dramatically as there would be no one left to tell the story. Christie reworked the ending for Lombard and Vera to be innocent of the crimes of which they were accused, survive, and fall in love with each other. Some of
6290-448: Is a continuously best selling novel in English and in translation to other languages since its initial publication. From the start, in English, it was published under two different titles, due to different sensitivity to the author's title in the UK and in the US at first publication. The novel was originally published in late 1939 and early 1940 almost simultaneously, in the United Kingdom and
6460-447: Is also related to detective fiction. The system of justice itself is always a major part of these works, at times almost functioning as one of the characters. In this way, the legal system provides the framework for the legal thriller as much as the system of modern police work does for the police procedural. The legal thriller usually starts its business with the court proceedings following the closure of an investigation, often resulting in
6630-411: Is also the world's best-selling mystery and one of the best-selling books of all time. Publications International lists the novel as the sixth best-selling title. The book and its adaptations have been released under various new names since the original publication, including Ten Little Indians (1946 play, Broadway performance and 1964 paperback book), Ten Little Soldiers, and official title per
6800-406: Is largely inspired by And Then There Were None. Mystery fiction Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often
6970-428: Is no scarcity of murders... There is a certain feeling of monotony inescapable in the regularity of the deaths which is better suited to a serialized newspaper story than a full-length novel. Yet there is an ingenious problem to solve in naming the murderer", he continued. "It will be an extremely astute reader who guesses correctly." For The New York Times Book Review (25 February 1940), Isaac Anderson has arrived to
And Then There Were None - Misplaced Pages Continue
7140-603: Is one of the first examples of the modern style of fictional private detective. This character is described as an "'Everyman' detective meant to challenge the detective-as-superman that Holmes represented." By the late 1920s, Al Capone and the Mob were inspiring not only fear, but piquing mainstream curiosity about the American crime underworld. Popular pulp fiction magazines like Black Mask capitalized on this, as authors such as Carrol John Daly published violent stories that focused on
7310-570: Is so full of shocks that even the mildest revelation would spoil some surprise from somebody, and I am sure that you would rather have your entertainment kept fresh than criticism pure." After stating the set-up of the plot, Richardson concluded, "Story telling and characterisation are right at the top of Mrs Christie's baleful form. Her plot may be highly artificial, but it is neat, brilliantly cunning, soundly constructed, and free from any of those red-herring false trails which sometimes disfigure her work." Robert Barnard , writing in 1990, concurred with
7480-422: Is some overlap with "thriller" or "suspense" novels and authors in those genres may consider themselves mystery novelists. Comic books and graphic novels have carried on the tradition, and film adaptations or the even-more-recent web-based detective series, have helped to re-popularize the genre in recent times. Though the origins of the genre date back to ancient literature and One Thousand and One Nights ,
7650-454: Is structured around the ten lines of the rhyme "Ten Little Niggers", an 1869 minstrel song by the British songwriter Frank Green. In later editions, the characters are replaced by "Ten Little Indians" or "Ten Little Soldiers". (Confusingly, the American songwriter Septimus Winner had published his own, quite different, minstrel song in 1868, called " Ten Little Indians [or Injuns]".) This
7820-428: Is the most baffling mystery that Agatha Christie has ever written, and if any other writer has ever surpassed it for sheer puzzlement the name escapes our memory. We are referring, of course, to mysteries that have logical explanations, as this one has. It is a tall story, to be sure, but it could have happened." Many compared the book to her 1926 novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . For instance, an unnamed reviewer in
7990-538: Is the rhyme as published in a British 2008 edition: Ten little Soldier Boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little Soldier Boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little Soldier Boys travelling in Devon; One said he'd stay there and then there were seven. Seven little Soldier Boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six. Six little Soldier Boys playing with
8160-590: The Toronto Daily Star of 16 March 1940 said, "Others have written better mysteries than Agatha Christie, but no one can touch her for ingenious plot and surprise ending. With And Then There Were None ... she is at her most ingenious and most surprising... is, indeed, considerably above the standard of her last few works and close to the Roger Ackroyd level." Other critics laud the use of plot twists and surprise endings . Maurice Richardson wrote
8330-522: The BBC Light Programme on 29 December. On 13 November 2010, as part of its Saturday Play series, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 90-minute adaptation written by Joy Wilkinson . The production was directed by Mary Peate and featured Geoffrey Whitehead as Mr Justice Wargrave, Lyndsey Marshal as Vera Claythorne, Alex Wyndham as Philip Lombard, John Rowe as Dr Armstrong, and Joanna Monro as Emily Brent. And Then There Were None (1943)
8500-598: The English Renaissance and, as people began to read over time, they became more individualistic in their thinking. As people became more individualistic in their thinking, they developed a respect for human reason and the ability to solve problems. Perhaps a reason that mystery fiction was unheard of before the 19th century was due in part to the lack of true police forces. Before the Industrial Revolution , many towns would have constables and
8670-732: The Gielgud Theatre in London. For this version, Elyot returned to the original story in the novel, restoring the nihilism of the original. Three British TV adaptations have been broadcast. The first two, which appeared under Christie's original title, were produced by the BBC in 1949 and by ITV in 1959. The third aired on BBC One in December 2015 as And Then There Were None . An American TV movie by Paul Bogart aired on NBC in 1959. In 2010, American animated TV series Family Guy adapted
SECTION 50
#17328012886608840-521: The Slovak National Theatre changed the title of a stage adaptation mid-run. The estate of Agatha Christie now offers it under only one title in English, And Then There Were None , and translations increasingly use the equivalent of this as their title. European Portuguese translations have been titled Convite Para a Morte (1948: "An Invitation to Death") and As Dez Figuras Negras (2011: "The Ten Black Figures" – referring to
9010-529: The endmen or cornermen . The interlocutor acted as a master of ceremonies and as a dignified, if pompous, straight man. He had a somewhat aristocratic demeanor, a "codfish aristocrat", while the endmen exchanged jokes and performed a variety of humorous songs. Over time, the first act came to include maudlin numbers not always in dialect. One minstrel, usually a tenor , came to specialize in this part; such singers often became celebrities, especially with women. Initially, an upbeat plantation song and dance ended
9180-409: The "deduction" of Sherlock Holmes, who was disparagingly included in some Lupin stories under obvious pseudonyms. The genre began to expand near the turn of the century with the development of dime novels and pulp magazines . Books were especially helpful to the genre, with many authors writing in the genre in the 1920s. An important contribution to mystery fiction in the 1920s was the development of
9350-560: The 'dark side' of the English would be appropriate." Unlike novels such as Heart of Darkness , "Christie's location is both more domesticated and privatized, taking for granted the construction of racial fears woven into psychic life as early as the nursery. If her story suggests how easy it is to play upon such fears, it is also a reminder of how intimately tied they are to sources of pleasure and enjoyment." In 1990 Crime Writers' Association ranked And Then There Were None 19th in their The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list. In 1995 in
9520-501: The 1820s, blackface performers called themselves "Ethiopian delineators"; from then into the early 1840s, unlike the later heyday of minstrelsy, they performed either solo or in small teams. Blackface soon found a home in the taverns of New York's less respectable precincts of Lower Broadway , the Bowery , and Chatham Street . It also appeared on more respectable stages, most often as an entr'acte . Upper class houses at first limited
9690-520: The 20th century the minstrel show enjoyed but a shadow of its former popularity, having been replaced for the most part by the Vaudeville style of theatre. The form survived as professional entertainment until about 1910; amateur performances continued until the 1960s in high schools and local theaters. The genre has had a lasting legacy and influence and was featured in the British television series The Black and White Minstrel Show as recently as
9860-475: The 20th century, now with an audience mostly in the rural South, while black-owned troupes continued traveling to more outlying areas like the West. These black troupes were one of minstrelsy's last bastions, as more white actors moved into vaudeville. (Community amateur blackface minstrel shows persisted in northern New York State into the 1960s. The University of Vermont banned the minstrel-like Kake Walk as part of
10030-568: The Agatha Christie Limited website, And Then There Were None . UK editions continued to use the work's original title until the 1980s; the first UK edition to use the alternative title And Then There Were None appeared in 1985 with a reprint of the 1963 Fontana Paperback. Many older translations were based on the original British text, although the word used to translate nigger was often somewhat less offensive, more analogous to English negro or negrito . Languages where
10200-435: The Civil War and merged qualities of the slave and the dandy. He was acknowledged for playing some role in the war, but he was more frequently lampooned for bumbling through his drills or for thinking his uniform made him the equal of his white counterparts. He was usually better at retreating than fighting, and, like the dandy, he preferred partying to serious pursuits. Still, his introduction allowed for some return to themes of
10370-1285: The Civil War. New entertainments such as variety shows, musical comedies and vaudeville appeared in the North, backed by master promoters like P. T. Barnum who wooed audiences away. Blackface troupes responded by traveling farther and farther afield, with their primary base now in the South and Midwest. By 1883 there were no resident minstrel troupes in New York, only performances by travelling troupes. Those minstrels who stayed in New York and similar cities followed Barnum's lead by advertising relentlessly and emphasizing spectacle. Troupes ballooned; as many as 19 performers could be on stage at once, and J. H. Haverly 's United Mastodon Minstrels had over 100 members. Scenery grew lavish and expensive, and specialty acts such as strongmen, acrobats, or circus freaks sometimes appeared. These changes made minstrelsy unprofitable for smaller troupes. Minstrel troupes, which previously had tended to be owned by performers, now tended to be owned by professional managers such as Haverly. Other minstrel troupes tried to satisfy different, less socially acceptable tastes. Female acts had made
SECTION 60
#173280128866010540-569: The Ethiopian Opera House and the like. Many amateur troupes performed only a few local shows before disbanding. Meanwhile, celebrities like Emmett continued to perform solo. The rise of the minstrel show coincided with the growth of the abolitionist movement. Many Northerners were concerned for the oppressed blacks of the South, but most had no idea how these slaves lived day-to-day. Blackface performance had been inconsistent on this subject; some slaves were happy, others victims of
10710-504: The Northern dandy and the homesick ex-slave reinforced the idea that blacks did not belong, nor did they want to belong, in Northern society. Adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin sprang up rapidly after its publication (all were unlicensed by Harriet Beecher Stowe, who refused to sell the theatrical rights for any sum). While all incorporated some elements of minstrelsy, their content varied significantly, from serious productions retaining
10880-632: The Orient Express (1934), Death on the Nile (1937), and the world's best-selling mystery And Then There Were None (1939). The massive popularity of pulp magazines in the 1930s and 1940s increased interest in mystery fiction. Pulp magazines decreased in popularity in the 1950s with the rise of television , so much that the numerous titles available then are reduced to two today: Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine —both now published by Dell Magazines ,
11050-478: The UK the book first appeared under the title Ten Little Niggers , in book and newspaper serialized formats. In the United States it was published under the title And Then There Were None , in both book and serial formats. Both of the original US publications changed the title from that originally used in the UK, due to the offensiveness of the word in American culture , where it was more widely perceived as
11220-470: The United States. The serialization was in 23 parts in the Daily Express from Tuesday 6 June to Saturday 1 July 1939. All of the instalments carried an illustration by "Prescott" with the first having an illustration of Burgh Island in Devon which inspired the setting of the story. The serialized version did not contain any chapter divisions. The book retailed for seven shillings and sixpence. In
11390-578: The act; later it was more common for the first act to end with a walkaround , including dances in the style of a cakewalk . The second portion of the show, called the olio , was historically the last to evolve, as its real purpose was to allow for the setting of the stage for act three behind the curtain. It had more of a variety show structure. Performers danced, played instruments, did acrobatics, and demonstrated other amusing talents. Troupes offered parodies of European-style entertainments, and European troupes themselves sometimes performed. The highlight
11560-525: The audience, although the focus was usually on sending up unpopular issues and making fun of blacks' inability to make sense of them. Many troupes employed a stump specialist with a trademark style and material. The afterpiece rounded out the production. In the early days of the minstrel show, this was often a skit set on a Southern plantation that usually included song-and-dance numbers and featured Sambo- and Mammy-type characters in slapstick situations. The emphasis lay on an idealized plantation life and
11730-455: The banjo. The New Orleans Picayune wrote that a singing New Orleans street vendor called Old Corn Meal would bring "a fortune to any man who would start on a professional tour with him". Rice responded by adding a "Corn Meal" skit to his act. Meanwhile, there had been several attempts at legitimate black stage performance, the most ambitious probably being New York's African Grove theater, founded and operated by free blacks in 1821, with
11900-436: The best-selling author Michael Connelly,"Chandler credited Hammett with taking the mystery out of the drawing-room and putting it out on the street where it belongs." In the late 1930s, Raymond Chandler updated the form with his private detective Philip Marlowe , who brought a more intimate voice to the detective than the more distanced "operative's report" style of Hammett's Continental Op stories. Despite struggling through
12070-416: The book's antislavery message like that of George Aiken 's, to minstrel show parodies which generally excised characters such as the cruel master Simon Legree, retaining only the "plantation frolics", differing from earlier minstrel shows only in name, to outright condemnation of Stowe as uninterested in the suffering of the white working class. " Tom shows " continued into the 20th century, continuing to blend
12240-411: The cars for target practice. Their salaries, though higher than those of most blacks of the period, failed to reach levels earned by white performers; even superstars like Kersands earned slightly less than featured white minstrels. Most black troupes did not last long. In content, early black minstrelsy differed little from its white counterpart. As the white troupes drifted from plantation subjects in
12410-422: The character of Othello being traditionally played by an actor in black makeup, the minstrel show as such has later origins. By the late 18th century, blackface characters began appearing on the American stage, usually as "servant" types whose roles did little more than provide some element of comic relief. Lewis Hallam is frequently cited as the first actor to perform in blackface based on an impression he did of
12580-519: The cheaper side of outdoor shows for the paying masses. Such traveling medicine shows also employed a Negro band and minstrels, including both men and women. Museums were set up to appeal to the low income audience, housing freak shows, wax sculptures, as well as exhibits of exoticism, mingled with magic, and necessarily live performance. African Americans were most often displayed as savages, cannibals, or natural freaks. Although white theatrical portrayals of black characters date back to as early as 1604,
12750-412: The comic aspects of minstrelsy with the more serious plot of the novel. Minstrelsy's racism (and sexism) could be vicious. There were comic songs in which blacks were "roasted, fished for, smoked like tobacco, peeled like potatoes, planted in the soil, or dried up and hung as advertisements", and there were multiple songs in which a black man accidentally put out a black woman's eyes. On the other hand,
12920-502: The crime scene. The genre was established in the 19th century. Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) is considered the first locked-room mystery; since then, other authors have used the scheme. John Dickson Carr was recognized as a master of the genre and his The Hollow Man was recognized by a panel of 17 mystery authors and reviewers as the best locked-room mystery of all time in 1981. The crime in question typically involves
13090-410: The crime. In the 1940s the police procedural evolved as a new style of detective fiction. Unlike the heroes of Christie, Chandler, and Spillane, the police detective was subject to error and was constrained by rules and regulations. As Gary Huasladen says in his book Places for Dead Bodies , "not all the clients were insatiable bombshells, and invariably there was life outside the job." The detective in
13260-623: The dandy, known frequently as Zip Coon, from the song Zip Coon . "First performed by George Dixon in 1834, Zip Coon made a mockery of free blacks. An arrogant, ostentatious figure, he dressed in high style and spoke in a series of malaprops and puns that undermined his attempts to appear dignified." The white actors who portrayed these characters spoke an exaggerated form of Black Vernacular English. The blackface makeup and illustrations on programs and sheet music depicted them with huge eyeballs, very wide noses, and thick-lipped mouths that hung open or grinned foolishly; one character expressed his love for
13430-431: The darkeys be" and they could not be "bought and sold". In plantation material, aged black characters were rarely reunited with long-lost masters like they were in white minstrelsy. African Americans formed a large part of the black minstrels' audience, especially for smaller troupes. In fact, their numbers were so great that many theater owners had to relax rules relegating black patrons to certain areas. The reasons for
13600-533: The detective and how the crime was solved, while mystery fiction concentrates on the identity of the culprit and how the crime was committed, a distinction that separated And Then There Were None from other works of Agatha Christie . A common subgenre of detective fiction is the Whodunit . Whodunits experienced an increase in popularity during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction of the 1920s-1940s, when it
13770-459: The detective's attempt to solve the mystery. There may also be subsidiary puzzles, such as why the crime was committed, and they are explained or resolved during the story. This format is the inversion of the more typical "whodunit", where all of the details of the perpetrator of the crime are not revealed until the story's climax. Martin Hewitt , created by British author Arthur Morrison in 1894,
13940-407: The dining room is being removed after each death, and that the manner of the deaths corresponds with the wording of the rhyme. Mr Justice Wargrave suggests that all drugs and firearms should be secured, and that everyone should submit to a search. Philip Lombard's gun cannot be found. That evening, Vera Claythorne goes up to her room and screams when she finds seaweed hanging from the ceiling. Most of
14110-422: The early 20th century, many credit Ellis Peters 's The Cadfael Chronicles (1977–1994) for popularizing what would become known as the historical mystery. The locked-room mystery is a subgenre of detective fiction. The crime—almost always murder—is committed in circumstances under which it was seemingly impossible for the perpetrator to commit the crime and/or evade detection in the course of getting in and out of
14280-405: The early reviews, describing the book as "Suspenseful and menacing detective-story-cum-thriller. The closed setting with the succession of deaths is here taken to its logical conclusion, and the dangers of ludicrousness and sheer reader-disbelief are skillfully avoided. Probably the best-known Christie, and justifiably among the most popular." The original title of the mystery ( Ten Little Niggers )
14450-492: The endmen and dressed themselves in lavish finery and powdered wigs. They decorated the stage with elaborate backdrops and performed no slapstick whatsoever. Their brand of minstrelsy differed from other entertainments only in name. Other troupes followed to varying extents, and pre-war style minstrelsy found itself confined to explicitly nostalgic "histories of minstrelsy" features. Social commentary continued to dominate most performances, with plantation material constituting only
14620-455: The faces of at least the endmen. One commentator described a mostly uncorked black troupe as "mulattoes of a medium shade except two, who were light. ... The end men were each rendered thoroughly black by burnt cork." The minstrels themselves promoted their performing abilities, quoting reviews that favorably compared them to popular white troupes. These black companies often featured female minstrels. One or two African-American troupes dominated
14790-559: The fact that the minstrel show broached the subjects of slavery and race at all is perhaps more significant than the racist manner in which it did so. Despite these pro-plantation attitudes, minstrelsy was banned in many Southern cities. Its association with the North was such that as secessionist attitudes grew stronger, minstrels on Southern tours became convenient targets of anti-Yankee sentiment. Non-race-related humor came from lampoons of other subjects, including aristocratic whites such as politicians, doctors, and lawyers. Women's rights
14960-400: The figurines, in this case minimally anthropomorphic). The Finnish translation Eikä yksikään pelastunut ("No one was saved") in 1940 had its title taken from the American first edition, before being renamed Kymmenen pientä neekeripoikaa ("Ten little negro boys") in 1968. This change was reversed in 2003. The 1930 novel The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning has
15130-617: The film. The 1933 K.B.S. Productions Sherlock Holmes film A Study in Scarlet follows a strikingly similar plot; the victims are tormented by slips of paper inspired by the same poem used in Christie's novel. One says "Six Little Black Boys | Playing With a Hive | A Bumble-Bee Stung One | And Then There Were Five." As in Christie's book, the killer turns out to be one of the "victims" who had appeared to be dead. The film retained no plot points from Arthur Conan Doyle 's original story of
15300-401: The first act of the show with a military high-stepping , brass band burlesque, a practice adopted after Callender's Minstrels used it in 1875 or 1876. Although black minstrelsy lent credence to racist ideals of blackness, many African-American minstrels worked to subtly alter these stereotypes and to poke fun at white society. One jubilee described heaven as a place "where de white folks must let
15470-530: The first totally black-owned black vaudeville show, The Rabbit's Foot Company , which performed with an all-black cast that elevated the level of shows with sophisticated and fun comedy. It successfully toured mainly the Southwest and Southeast, as well as in New Jersey and New York City. The Christy Minstrels established the basic structure of the minstrel show in the 1840s. A crowd-gathering parade to
15640-483: The form again with his detective Lew Archer . Archer, like Hammett's fictional heroes, was a camera eye, with hardly any known past. "Turn Archer sideways, and he disappears," one reviewer wrote. Two of Macdonald's strengths were his use of psychology and his beautiful prose, which was full of imagery. Like other 'hardboiled' writers, Macdonald aimed to give an impression of realism in his work through violence, sex and confrontation. The 1966 movie Harper starring Paul Newman
15810-423: The genre. True crime is a literary genre that recounts real crimes committed by real people, almost half focusing on serial killers . Criticized by many as being insensitive to those personally acquainted with the incidents, it is often categorized as trash culture . Having basis on reality, it shares more similarities with docufiction than the mystery genre. Unlike fiction of the kind, it does not focus much on
15980-470: The gramophone recording. Once it became clear that the killer was one of the group, Wargrave tricked Dr Armstrong into helping him fake his own death as part of a fictitious scheme to trap the murderer into incriminating himself. After all the others were dead, Wargrave shot himself, making sure that his true death matched his staged death recorded in the guests' diaries, so that investigators would be left with "ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem". The plot
16150-412: The guidance of their Northern friends." White curiosity proved a powerful motivator, and the shows were patronized by people who wanted to see blacks acting "spontaneously" and "naturally." Promoters seized on this, one billing his troupe as "THE DARKY AS HE IS AT HOME, DARKY LIFE IN THE CORNFIELD, Canebrake , BARNYARD, AND ON THE LEVEE AND FLATBOAT." Keeping with convention, black minstrels still corked
16320-603: The guise of the female impersonator. A well-played prima donna character, as popularised by the performer Francis Leon, was considered to be critical to success in the postwar period. This new minstrelsy maintained an emphasis on refined music. Most troupes added jubilees, or spirituals , to their repertoire in the 1870s. These were fairly authentic religious slave songs borrowed from traveling black singing groups. Other troupes drifted further from minstrelsy's roots. When George Primrose and Billy West broke with Haverly's Mastodons in 1877, they did away with blackface for all but
16490-453: The happy slaves who lived there. Nevertheless, antislavery viewpoints sometimes surfaced in the guise of family members separated by slavery, runaways, or even slave uprisings. A few stories highlighted black trickster figures who managed to get the better of their masters. Beginning in the mid-1850s, performers did burlesque renditions of other plays; both Shakespeare and contemporary playwrights were common targets. The humor of these came from
16660-468: The host's written instructions, Mr Rogers puts on a gramophone record, which accuses all ten people present of having committed murder. The guests realise that none of them know the Owens. Anthony Marston finishes his drink and promptly dies from cyanide poisoning . The next morning, Mrs Rogers is found dead in her bed. Suspecting that their unknown host may have caused the deaths, some of the guests search
16830-578: The identity of the culprit and has no red herrings or clues, but often emphasizes how the culprit was caught and their motivations behind their actions. Cozy mysteries began in the late 20th century as a reinvention of the Golden Age whodunit; these novels generally shy away from violence and suspense and frequently feature female amateur detectives. Modern cozy mysteries are frequently, though not necessarily in either case, humorous and thematic. This genre features minimal violence, sex and social relevance,
17000-568: The inept black characters trying to perform some element of high white culture. Slapstick humor pervaded the afterpiece, including cream pies to the face, inflated bladders, and on-stage fireworks. Material from Uncle Tom's Cabin dominated beginning in 1853. The afterpiece allowed the minstrels to introduce new characters, some of whom became quite popular and spread from troupe to troupe. The earliest minstrel characters took as their base popular white stage archetypes—frontiersmen, fishermen, hunters, and riverboatsmen whose depictions drew heavily from
17170-417: The instruments they played: Brudder Tambo (or simply Tambo ) for the tambourine and Brudder Bones (or Bones ) for the bone castanets or bones . These endmen (for their position in the minstrel semicircle) were ignorant and poorly spoken, being conned, electrocuted, or run over in various sketches. They happily shared their stupidity; one slave character said that to get to China, one had only to go up in
17340-417: The island's name, the pivotal rhyme found by the visitors, and the ten figurines. UK editions continued to use the original title until the current definitive title appeared with a reprint of the 1963 Fontana Paperback in 1985. The word " nigger " was already racially offensive in the United States by the start of the 20th century, and therefore the book's first US edition (1940) and first serialization changed
17510-400: The island, but find nobody else. After General MacArthur dies from a blow to the head, the guests conclude that one of the seven remaining persons must be responsible. The following day, Mr Rogers is found dead at the woodpile, having been attacked with an axe, and Emily Brent is found dead in the drawing room, having been injected with potassium cyanide . The guests realise that one figurine in
17680-537: The juvenile mystery by Edward Stratemeyer . Stratemeyer originally developed and wrote the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries written under the Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene pseudonyms respectively (and were later written by his daughter, Harriet Adams , and other authors). The 1920s also gave rise to one of the most popular mystery authors of all time, Agatha Christie , whose works include Murder on
17850-419: The last five words of the song. Successive American reprints and adaptations use that title, though American Pocket Books paperbacks used the title Ten Little Indians between 1964 and 1986. UK editions continued to use the original title until 1985. The book is the world's best-selling mystery, and with over 100 million copies sold is one of the best-selling books of all time. The novel has been listed as
18020-407: The last person alive, as objects had been moved after their deaths, and they consider Blore's death unlikely to have been suicide. All indications are that no one else was on the island during this time, leaving the police mystified. A sealed bottle is recovered from the sea, containing a written confession by Wargrave. He reveals that all his life he had possessed both a strong sense of justice and
18190-438: The late 1970s and early 1980s. Each author's detective, also female, was brainy and physical and could hold her own. Their acceptance, and success, caused publishers to seek out other female authors. These works are set in a time period considered historical from the author's perspective, and the central plot involves the solving of a mystery or crime (usually murder). Though works combining these genres have existed since at least
18360-497: The list of the "Nine Great Christie Novels". "I had written the book Ten Little Niggers because it was so difficult to do that the idea had fascinated me. Ten people had to die without it becoming ridiculous or the murderer being obvious. I wrote the book after a tremendous amount of planning, and I was pleased with what I had made of it. It was clear, straightforward, baffling, and yet had a perfectly reasonable explanation; in fact, it had to have an epilogue in order to explain it. It
18530-447: The main characters. These stories may take a variety of forms, but many authors try to realistically depict the routine activities of a group of police officers who are frequently working on more than one case simultaneously, providing a stark contrast to the detective-as-superhero archetype of Sherlock Holmes. Some of these stories are whodunits; in others, the criminal is known, and the police must gather enough evidence to charge them with
18700-453: The mayhem and injustice surrounding the criminals, not the circumstances behind the crime. Very often, no actual mystery even existed: the books simply revolved around justice being served to those who deserved harsh treatment, which was described in explicit detail." The overall theme these writers portrayed reflected "the changing face of America itself." In the 1930s, the private eye genre was adopted wholeheartedly by American writers. One of
18870-408: The mid-1870s however, black troupes placed a new emphasis on it. The addition of jubilee singing gave black minstrelsy a popularity boost as the black troupes were rightly believed to be the most authentic performers of such material. Other significant differences were that the black minstrels added religious themes to their shows while whites shied from them, and that the black companies commonly ended
19040-426: The mid-1970s. Generally, as the civil rights movement progressed and gained acceptance, minstrelsy lost popularity. The typical minstrel performance followed a three-act structure. The troupe first danced onto stage then exchanged wisecracks and sang songs. The second part featured a variety of entertainments, including the pun-filled stump speech . The final act consisted of a slapstick musical plantation skit or
19210-460: The minstrel shows were extremely popular, being "consistently packed with families from all walks of life and every ethnic group", they were also controversial. Integrationists decried them as falsely showing happy slaves while at the same time making fun of them; segregationists thought such shows were "disrespectful" of social norms as they portrayed runaway slaves with sympathy and would undermine slavery. Minstrel shows were popular before slavery
19380-516: The modern detective story as it is known today was invented by Edgar Allan Poe in the mid-19th century through his short story, " The Murders in the Rue Morgue ", which featured arguably the world's first fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin . However, detective fiction was popularized only later, in the late 19th century, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 's Sherlock Holmes stories, considered milestones in crime fiction . The detective story shares some similarities with mystery fiction in that it also has
19550-514: The mood of a bereaved nation. Troupes performed skits about dying soldiers and their weeping widows, and about mourning white mothers. " When This Cruel War Is Over " became the hit of the period, selling over a million copies of sheet music. To balance the somber mood, minstrels put on patriotic numbers like " The Star-Spangled Banner ", accompanied by depictions of scenes from American history that lionized figures like George Washington and Andrew Jackson. Social commentary grew increasingly important to
19720-496: The most popular black troupe in America, and the words Callender and Georgia came to be synonymous with the institution of black minstrelsy. J. H. Haverly, in turn, purchased Callender's troupe in 1878 and applied his strategy of enlarging troupe size and embellishing sets. When this company went to Europe, Gustave and Charles Frohman took the opportunity to promote their Callender's Consolidated Colored Minstrels. Their success
19890-485: The most popular song on this subject. Less frequently, the old darky might be cast out by a cruel master when he grew too old to work. After the Civil War, this character became the most common figure in plantation sketches. He frequently cried about the loss of his home during the war, only to meet up with someone from the past such as the child of his former master. In contrast, the trickster, often called Jasper Jack, appeared less frequently. Female characters ranged from
20060-693: The most recent edition retains racial epithets include Spanish, Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Russian and Hungarian, as well as the 1987 Soviet film adaptation Desyat Negrityat . Changes similar to those in the British edition in the 1980s were made to the German novel in 2003, after 2002 protests in Hanover against a stage version using the old title. Similar changes were made in Dutch in 2004, Swedish in 2007, Brazilian Portuguese in 2009, Polish in 2017, French in 2020, and Turkish in 2021. In 1999,
20230-478: The names were also changed, e.g., General MacArthur became General McKenzie in both the New York and London productions. By 1943, General Douglas MacArthur was playing a prominent role in the Pacific Theatre of World War II , which may explain the change of the character's name. Ten Little Niggers (1944): Dundee Repertory Theatre Company was given special permission to restore the original ending of
20400-497: The night with no need for sleep. Thomas "Daddy" Rice introduced the earliest slave archetype with his song " Jump Jim Crow " and its accompanying dance. He claimed to have learned the number by watching an old, limping black stable hand dancing and singing, "Wheel about and turn about and do jus' so/Eb'ry time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow." Other early minstrel performers quickly adopted Rice's character. Slave characters in general came to be low-comedy types with names that matched
20570-649: The novel. The company first performed a stage adaptation of the novel in August 1944 under the UK title of the novel, with Christie credited as the dramatist. It was the first performance in repertory theatre. It was staged again in 1965. There was an article in the Dundee Evening Register in August 1944 about it. And Then There Were None (2005): On 14 October 2005, a new version of the play, written by Kevin Elyot and directed by Steven Pimlott , opened at
20740-537: The number of such acts they would show, but beginning in 1841, blackface performers frequently took to the stage at even the classy Park Theatre , much to the dismay of some patrons. Theater was a participatory activity, and the lower classes came to dominate the playhouse. They threw things at actors or orchestras who performed unpopular material, and rowdy audiences eventually prevented the Bowery Theatre from staging high drama at all. Typical blackface acts of
20910-573: The period were short burlesques , often with mock Shakespearean titles like " Hamlet the Dainty ", " Bad Breath, the Crane of Chowder ", " Julius Sneezer " or " Dars-de-Money ". Meanwhile, at least some whites were interested in black song and dance by actual black performers. Nineteenth-century New York slaves shingle danced for spare change on their days off, and musicians played what they claimed to be "Negro music" on so-called black instruments like
21080-517: The pleasure of the grotesque and its infantilization of blacks. These allowed—by proxy, and without full identification—childish fun and other low pleasures in an industrializing world where workers were increasingly expected to abandon such things. With the Panic of 1837 , theater attendance suffered, and concerts were one of the few attractions that could still make money. In 1843, four blackface performers led by Dan Emmett combined to stage just such
21250-402: The point where "the voice" accuses the ten "guests" of their past crimes, which have all resulted in the deaths of humans, and then said, "When you read what happens after that you will not believe it, but you will keep on reading, and as one incredible event is followed by another even more incredible you will still keep on reading. The whole thing is utterly impossible and utterly fascinating. It
21420-417: The police procedural does the things police officers do to catch a criminal. Writers of the genre include Ed McBain , P. D. James and Bartholomew Gill . An inverted detective story, also known as a "howcatchem", is a plot structure of murder mystery fiction in which the commission of the crime is shown or described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator. The story then describes
21590-596: The popularity of this openly racist form of entertainment with black audiences have long been debated by historians. Perhaps they felt in on the joke, laughing at the over-the-top characters from a sense of "in-group recognition". Maybe they even implicitly endorsed the racist antics, or they felt some connection to elements of an African culture that had been suppressed but was visible, albeit in racist, exaggerated form, in minstrel personages. They certainly got many jokes that flew over whites' heads or registered as only quaint distractions. An undeniable draw for black audiences
21760-499: The primary contributors to this style was Dashiell Hammett with his famous private investigator character, Sam Spade . His style of crime fiction came to be known as "hardboiled", which is described as a genre that "usually deals with criminal activity in a modern urban environment, a world of disconnected signs and anonymous strangers." "Told in stark and sometimes elegant language through the unemotional eyes of new hero-detectives, these stories were an American phenomenon." According to
21930-477: The refined singing of the Ethiopian Serenaders (epitomized by the work of Christy's composer Stephen Foster ) with the Virginia Minstrels' bawdy schtick. Christy's company established the three-act template into which minstrel shows would fall for the next few decades. This change to respectability prompted theater owners to enforce new rules to make playhouses calmer and quieter. Minstrels toured
22100-408: The remaining guests rush upstairs; when they return they find Wargrave still downstairs in his chair. Dr Armstrong pronounces him dead from a gunshot wound to the forehead. That night, Lombard's gun is returned, William Blore sees someone leaving the house, and Armstrong mysteriously disappears. After breakfast next morning, Vera, Lombard, and Blore go out. When Blore returns for food, he is killed by
22270-488: The repertoire in the 1870s, marking the first undeniably black music to be used in minstrelsy. During the 1830s and 1840s at the height of its popularity, it was at the epicenter of the American music industry. For several decades, it provided the means through which American whites viewed black people. On the one hand, it had strong racist aspects; on the other, it afforded white Americans more awareness, albeit distorted, of some aspects of black culture in America. Although
22440-486: The rhyme, she hangs herself. Scotland Yard officials arrive to find ten bodies. They discover that a sleazy agent named Isaac Morris had purchased the island and made all the arrangements on behalf of an unknown buyer. Morris had died shortly afterwards from an overdose of barbiturates , leaving nothing to indicate the buyer's identity. From the victims' diaries, the police reconstruct the first six deaths. They deduce that neither Armstrong, Lombard, nor Vera could have been
22610-451: The same circuits as opera companies, circuses, and European itinerant entertainers, with venues ranging from lavish opera houses to makeshift tavern stages. Life on the road entailed an "endless series of one-nighters, travel on accident-prone railroads, in poor housing subject to fires, in empty rooms that they had to convert into theaters, arrest on trumped up charges, exposed to deadly diseases, and managers and agents who skipped out with all
22780-407: The same name . The author of the movie's screenplay, Robert Florey , "doubted that [Christie] had seen A Study in Scarlet , but he regarded it as a compliment if it had helped inspire her". And Then There Were None has had more adaptations than any other work by Agatha Christie . Christie herself changed the bleak ending to a more palatable one for theatre audiences when she adapted the novel for
22950-406: The same names which contained conventional hardboiled crime fiction. The first use of "mystery" in that sense was by Dime Mystery , which started out as an ordinary crime fiction magazine but switched to " weird menace " during the later part of 1933. The genre of mystery novels is a young form of literature that has developed since the early 19th century. The rise of literacy began in the years of
23120-533: The scene for much of the late 1860s and 1870s. The first of these was Brooker and Clayton's Georgia Minstrels , who played the Northeast around 1865. Sam Hague 's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels formed shortly thereafter and toured England to great success beginning in 1866. In the 1870s, white entrepreneurs bought most of the successful black companies. Charles Callender obtained Sam Hague's troupe in 1872 and renamed it Callender's Georgia Minstrels. They became
23290-399: The sexually provocative to the laughable. These roles were almost always played by men in drag (most famously George Christy , Francis Leon and Barney Williams ), even though American theater outside minstrelsy was filled with actresses at this time. Mammy or the old auntie was the old darky's counterpart. She often went by the name of Aunt Dinah Roh after the song of that title. Mammy
23460-420: The show. Performers criticized Northern society and those they felt responsible for the breakup of the country, who opposed reunification, or who profited from a nation at war. Emancipation was either opposed through "happy plantation" material, or mildly supported with pieces that depicted slavery in a negative light. Eventually, direct criticism of the South became more biting. Minstrelsy lost popularity during
23630-497: The sixth best-selling title (any language, including reference works). Eight people arrive on a small, isolated island off the Devon coast, each having received an unexpected invitation. They are met by the butler and housekeeper, Thomas and Ethel Rogers, who explain that their hosts, Mr and Mrs Owen, have not yet arrived. A framed copy of an old rhyme hangs in every guest's room, and on the dining room table sit ten figurines. Acting on
23800-462: The song popularized by George Washington Dixon, although others had pretentious names like Count Julius Caesar Mars Napoleon Sinclair Brown. Their clothing was a ludicrous parody of upper-class dress: coats with tails and padded shoulders, white gloves, monocles, fake mustaches, and gaudy watch chains. They spent their time primping and preening, going to parties, dancing and strutting, and wooing women. The black soldier became another stock type during
23970-509: The stage in 1943. Many adaptations incorporate changes to the story, such as using Christie's alternative ending from her stage play or changing the setting to locations other than an island. There have been numerous film adaptations of the novel: The BBC broadcast Ten Little Niggers (1947), adapted by Ayton Whitaker , first aired as a Monday Matinee on the BBC Home Service on 27 December 1947 and as Saturday Night Theatre on
24140-514: The story as " And Then There Were Fewer ". There have been many foreign-language TV adaptations: The novel was the inspiration for several video games. For the Apple II , Online Systems released Mystery House in 1980. On the PC, The Adventure Company released Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None in 2005, the first in a series of PC games based on Christie novels . In February 2008, it
24310-406: The tall tale—and added exaggerated blackface speech and makeup. These Jim Crows and Gumbo Chaffs fought and boasted that they could "wip [their] weight in wildcats" or "eat an alligator". As public opinion toward blacks changed, however, so did the minstrel stereotypes. Eventually, several stock characters emerged. Chief among these were the slave, who often maintained the earlier name Jim Crow, and
24480-740: The task of plotting a story, his cadenced dialogue and cryptic narrations were musical, evoking the dark alleys and tough thugs, rich women and powerful men about whom he wrote. Several feature and television movies have been made about the Philip Marlowe character. James Hadley Chase wrote a few novels with private eyes as the main heroes, including Blonde's Requiem (1945), Lay Her Among the Lilies (1950), and Figure It Out for Yourself (1950). The heroes of these novels are typical private eyes, very similar to or plagiarizing Raymond Chandler's work. Ross Macdonald, pseudonym of Kenneth Millar , updated
24650-414: The theater often preceded the performance. The show itself was divided into three major sections. During the first, the entire troupe danced onto stage singing a popular song. Upon the instruction of the interlocutor , a sort of host, they sat in a semicircle. Various stock characters always took the same positions: the genteel interlocutor in the middle, flanked by Mr Tambo and Mr Bones , who served as
24820-513: The title to And Then There Were None and removed all references to the word from the book, as did the 1945 motion picture (except that the first US edition retained the phrase " nigger in the woodpile " in Chapter 2 Part VII and Chapter 7 Part III). Sensitivity to the original title of the novel was remarked by Sadie Stein in 2016, commenting on a BBC mini series with the title And Then There Were None , where she noted that "even in 1939, this title
24990-525: The troupe's money." The more popular groups stuck to the main circuit that ran through the Northeast; some even went to Europe, which allowed their competitors to establish themselves in their absence. By the late 1840s, a Southern tour had opened from Baltimore to New Orleans. Circuits through the Midwest and as far as California followed by the 1860s. As its popularity increased, theaters sprang up specifically for minstrel performance, often with names such as
25160-497: The war. Women's rights, disrespectful children, low church attendance, and sexual promiscuity became symptoms of decline in family values and of moral decay. Of course, Northern black characters carried these vices even further. African-American members of Congress were one example, pictured as pawns of the Radical Republicans . By the 1890s, minstrelsy formed only a small part of American entertainment, and, by 1919,
25330-455: The winter Carnival in 1969.) In the 1840s and '50s, William Henry Lane and Thomas Dilward became the first African Americans to perform on the minstrel stage. All-black troupes followed as early as 1855. These companies emphasized that their ethnicity made them the only true delineators of black song and dance, with one advertisement describing a troupe as "SEVEN SLAVES just from Alabama, who are EARNING THEIR FREEDOM by giving concerts under
25500-477: Was abolished, sufficiently so that Frederick Douglass described blackface performers as "...the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens." Circus sideshows included Negro performers, minstrels were exhibited in museums, Wild West shows , and in musical ensembles. Black people were also part of traveling medicine shows , which were on
25670-602: Was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of comically portraying racial stereotypes of African Americans. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows stereotyped blacks as dimwitted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent. Blackface minstrelsy
25840-585: Was an influence on The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe (1841) as may have been Voltaire 's Zadig (1747). Wilkie Collins ' novel The Woman in White was published in 1860, while The Moonstone (1868) is often thought to be his masterpiece. In 1887 Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes , whose mysteries are said to have been singularly responsible for the huge popularity in this genre. In 1901 Maurice Leblanc created gentleman burglar, Arsène Lupin , whose creative imagination rivaled
26010-415: Was another serious subject that appeared with some regularity in antebellum minstrelsy, almost always to ridicule the notion. The women's rights lecture became common in stump speeches. When one character joked, "Jim, I tink de ladies oughter vote", another replied, "No, Mr. Johnson, ladies am supposed to care berry little about polytick, and yet de majority ob em am strongly tached to parties." Minstrel humor
26180-541: Was based on the first Lew Archer story The Moving Target (1949). Newman reprised the role in The Drowning Pool in 1976. Michael Collins, pseudonym of Dennis Lynds , is generally considered the author who led the form into the Modern Age. His private investigator, Dan Fortune, was consistently involved in the same sort of David-and-Goliath stories that Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald wrote, but Collins took
26350-406: Was changed because it was offensive. Alison Light, a literary critic and feminist scholar, opined that Christie's original title and the setting on "Nigger Island" (later changed to "Indian Island" and "Soldier Island", variously) were integral to the work. These aspects of the novel, she argued, "could be relied upon automatically to conjure up a thrilling 'otherness', a place where revelations about
26520-399: Was considered too offensive for American publication." In general, "Christie's work is not known for its racial sensitivity, and by modern standards her oeuvre is rife with casual Orientalism ." The original title was based on a rhyme from minstrel shows and children's games. Stein quotes Alison Light as to the power of the original name of the island in the novel, Nigger Island, "to conjure up
26690-402: Was highly musical and none-too-bright, but he had favorable aspects like his loving nature and the sentiments he raised regarding love for the aged, ideas of old friendships, and the cohesiveness of the family. His death and the pain it caused his master was a common theme in sentimental songs. Alternatively, the master could die, leaving the old darky to mourn. Stephen Foster's "Old Uncle Ned" was
26860-445: Was lovable to both blacks and whites, matronly, but hearkening to European peasant woman sensibilities. Her main role was to be the devoted mother figure in scenarios about the perfect plantation family. The wench , yaller gal or prima donna was a mulatto who combined the light skin and facial features of a white woman with the perceived sexual promiscuity and exoticism of a black woman. Her beauty and flirtatiousness made her
27030-542: Was one. One little Soldier Boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none. Each of the ten victims – eight guests plus the island's two caretakers – is killed in a manner that reflects one of the lines of the rhyme. A sleazy agent who helped arrange the affair is also killed, but his killing occurs on the mainland and outside of the main storyline. Writing for The Times Literary Supplement of 11 November 1939, Maurice Percy Ashley stated, "If her latest story has scarcely any detection in it there
27200-589: Was ported to the Wii console. And Then There Were None was released by HarperCollins as a graphic novel adaptation on 30 April 2009, adapted by François Rivière and illustrated by Frank Leclercq. In 2014 Peká Editorial released a board game based on the book, Diez Negritos ("Ten Little Negroes"), created by Judit Hurtado and Fernando Chavarría, and illustrated by Esperanza Peinado. The 2014 live action comedy-crime and murder mystery TV web series Ten Little Roosters , produced by American company Rooster Teeth ,
27370-439: Was responsible for beginning and ending each segment of the show. To this end, he had to be able to gauge the mood of the audience and know when it was time to move on. Accordingly, the actor who played the role was paid very well in comparison to other non-featured performers. There were many variants on the slave archetype. The old darky or old uncle formed the head of the idyllic black family. Like other slave characters, he
27540-569: Was simple and relied heavily on slapstick and wordplay. Performers told riddles: "The difference between a schoolmaster and an engineer is that one trains the mind and the other minds the train." With the advent of the American Civil War , minstrels remained mostly neutral and satirized both sides. However, as the war reached Northern soil, troupes turned their loyalties to the Union. Sad songs and sketches came to dominate in reflection of
27710-445: Was simply seeing fellow African Americans on stage; black minstrels were largely viewed as celebrities. Formally educated African Americans, on the other hand, either disregarded black minstrelsy or openly disdained it. Still, black minstrelsy was the first large-scale opportunity for African Americans to enter American show business. Black minstrels were therefore viewed as a success. Pat H. Chappelle capitalized on this and created
27880-436: Was so good he could fool blacks when he mingled with them in the streets. Thomas Dartmouth Rice 's successful song-and-dance number, " Jump Jim Crow ", brought blackface performance to a new level of prominence in the early 1830s. At the height of Rice's success, The Boston Post wrote, "The two most popular characters in the world at the present are [Queen] Victoria of the United Kingdom and Jump Jim Crow ." As early as
28050-535: Was such that the Frohmans bought Haverly's group and merged it with theirs, creating a virtual monopoly on the market. The company split in three to better canvas the nation and dominated black minstrelsy throughout the 1880s. Individual black performers like Billy Kersands , James A. Bland , Sam Lucas , Martin Francis and Wallace King grew as famous as any featured white performer. Racism made black minstrelsy
28220-517: Was the funny old gal , a slapstick role played by a large man in motley clothing and large, flapping shoes. The humor she invoked often turned on the male characters' desire for a woman whom the audience would perceive as unattractive. The counterpart to the slave was the dandy , a common character in the afterpiece. He was a Northern, urban black man trying to live above his station by mimicking white, upper-class speech and dress—usually to no good effect. Dandy characters often went by Zip Coon , after
28390-463: Was the first uniquely American form of theater, and for many minstrel shows emerged as brief burlesques and comic entr'actes in the early 1830s in the Northeastern states . They were developed into full-fledged art form in the next decade. By 1848, blackface minstrel shows were the national artform, translating formal art such as opera into popular terms for a general audience. By the turn of
28560-399: Was the primary style of detective fiction. This subgenre is classified as a detective story where the reader is given clues throughout as to who the culprit is, giving the reader the opportunity to solve the crime before it is revealed. During the Golden Age, whodunits were written primarily by women, however Wilkie Collins ' The Moonstone is often recognized as one of the first examples of
28730-421: Was well received and reviewed, but the person who was really pleased with it was myself, for I knew better than any critic how difficult it had been... I don't say it is the play or book of mine that I like best, or even that I think it is my best, but I do think in some ways that it is a better piece of craftsmanship than anything else I have written." The novel has a long and noteworthy history of publication. It
28900-563: Was when one actor, typically one of the endmen, delivered a faux-black-dialect stump speech , a long oration about anything from nonsense to science, society, or politics, during which the dim-witted character tried to speak eloquently, only to deliver countless malapropisms, jokes, and unintentional puns. All the while, the speaker moved about like a clown, standing on his head and almost always falling off his stump at some point. With blackface makeup serving as fool's mask, these stump speakers could deliver biting social criticism without offending
#659340