And Then There Were None

This is the version of the rhyme as published in a recent edition:[9]

The rhyme used by Christie was derived from older minstrel songs of the 19th century, one in Britain in 1869[21] and one in the US in 1868.[22]

1869 & 1868 verses

Cover of first US 1940 edition with current title for all English-language versions.

In the UK it 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 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.[4][5][6]

In the original UK novel, and in succeeding publications until 1985, all references to "Indians" or "Soldiers" were originally "Nigger", including the island's name, the pivotal rhyme found by the visitors, and the ten figurines.[5] (In Chapter 7, Vera Claythorne becomes semi-hysterical at the mention by Miss Brent of "our black brothers", which is understandable only in the context of the original name.) UK editions continued to use the original title until the current definitive title appeared with a reprint of the 1963 Fontana Paperback in 1985.[24]

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 and first serialization changed 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 'nigger in the woodpile' in chapter 2 part VIII). 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 "[E]ven in 1939, this title was considered too offensive for American publication."[25] In general, "Christie’s work is not known for its racial sensitivity, and by modern standards her oeuvre is rife with casual Orientalism."[25] 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 a thrilling ‘otherness’, a place where revelations about the ‘dark side’ of the English would be appropriate".[26] 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."[26] Speaking of the "widely known" 1945 film, Stein added that "we’re merely faced with fantastic amounts of violence, and a rhyme so macabre and distressing one doesn’t hear it now outside of the Agatha Christie context."[25] She felt that the original title of the novel in the UK, seen now, "that original title, it jars, viscerally."[25]

This is the best-selling crime novel of all time, and made Agatha Christie the best-selling novelist, according to the Agatha Christie Estate.[2]

It is Christie's best-selling novel, with more than 100 million copies sold; it 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.[7]

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 the Agatha Christie Limited website, And Then There Were None.[2] 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.[24]

• Christie, Agatha (November 1939). Ten Little Niggers. London: Collins Crime Club. OCLC 152375426. Hardback, 256 pp. First edition.
• Christie, Agatha (January 1940). And Then There Were None. New York: Dodd, Mead. OCLC 1824276. Hardback, 264 pp. First US edition.
• Christie, Agatha (1944). And Then There Were None. New York: Pocket Books (Pocket number 261). Paperback, 173 pp.
• Christie, Agatha (1947). Ten Little Niggers. London: Pan Books (Pan number 4). Paperback, 190 pp.
• Christie, Agatha (1958). Ten Little Niggers. London: Penguin Books (Penguin number 1256). Paperback, 201 pp.
• Christie, Agatha (1963). Ten Little Niggers. London: Fontana. OCLC 12503435. Paperback, 190 pp. The 1985 reprint was the first UK publication of the novel under the title And Then There Were None.[24]
• Christie, Agatha (1964). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books. OCLC 29462459. First publication of novel as Ten Little Indians.
• Christie, Agatha (1964). And Then There Were None. New York: Washington Square Press. Paperback, teacher's edition.
• Christie, Agatha (1977). Ten Little Niggers (Greenway ed.). London: Collins Crime Club. ISBN 0-00-231835-0. Collected works, Hardback, 252 pp. (Except for reprints of the 1963 Fontana paperback, this was one of the last English-language publications of the novel under the title Ten Little Niggers.)[27]
• Christie, Agatha (1980). The Mysterious Affair at Styles; Ten Little Niggers; Dumb Witness. Sydney: Lansdowne Press. ISBN 0-7018-1453-5. Late use of the original title in an Australian edition.
• Christie, Agatha (1986). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-55222-8. Last publication of novel under the title Ten Little Indians.

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 the most recent edition retains racial epithets include Spanish, Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian,[28] 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,[n 1] after 2002 protests in Hanover against a stage version using the old title.[29] Similar changes were made in Dutch in 2004,[n 2] Swedish in 2007,[n 3] Brazilian Portuguese in 2009,[n 4] Polish in 2017,[n 5] and French in 2020.[n 6] In 1999, the Slovak National Theatre changed the title of a stage adaptation mid-run.[n 7] The estate of Agatha Christie now offers it under only one title in English, And Then There Were None,[2] and translations increasingly use the equivalent of this as their title.[33] 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 the figurines, in this case minimally anthropomorphic).[33]

There have been numerous film adaptations of the novel:

• And Then There Were None (1945 film), American film by René Clair
• Ten Little Indians (1965 film), British film directed by George Pollock and produced by Harry Alan Towers; Pollock had previously handled four Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford. Set in a mountain retreat in Austria.
• Gumnaam (1965, translation: Unknown or Anonymous), an Indian suspense thriller. This loose, uncredited Hindi film adaptation added the characteristic "Bollywood" elements of comedy, music and dance to Christie's plot.[40]
• Nadu Iravil (1970, translation: In the middle of the night), a Tamil adaptation directed by Sundaram Balachander[41]
• And Then There Were None (1974), the first English-language colour version, directed by Peter Collinson and produced by Harry Alan Towers. Based on a screenplay by Towers (writing as "Peter Welbeck"), who co-wrote the screenplay for the 1965 film. Set at a grand hotel in the Iranian desert.
• Ten Little Indians, a 1981 Filipino production in Tagalog, starring William Martinez and Herbert Bautista
• Ten Little Maidens, a 1985 adult film starring Nina Hartley, Amber Lynn, Eric Edwards, Harry Reems and Ginger Lynn
• Desyat' Negrityat (1987, Десять негритят, Eng: "Ten Little Negroes") a Russian adaptation produced/directed by Stanislav Govorukhin, notable for being the first cinema adaptation to keep the novel's original plot and grim ending.
• Ten Little Indians, a 1989 British version, produced by Harry Alan Towers and directed by Alan Birkinshaw, set on safari in the African savannah
• Mindhunters, a 2004 American-British crime thriller
• Aduthathu, a 2012 Tamil adaptation[42]
• Aatagara, a 2015 Kannada adaptation[43]

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 the BBC Light Programme on 29 December.[44]

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 play) 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 the names were also changed, e.g., General MacArthur became General McKenzie in both the New York and London productions.[45][46] 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 play), Dundee Repertory Theatre Company was given special permission to restore the original ending of 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.[47] It was the first performance in repertory theatre.[47] It was staged again in 1965.[48] There was an article in the Dundee Evening Register in August 1944

And Then There Were None (2005 play). On 14 October 2005, a new version of the play, written by Kevin Elyot and directed by Steven Pimlott, opened at the Gielgud Theatre in London. For this version, Elyot returned to the original story in the novel, restoring the nihilism of the original.[49]

Several variations of the original novel were adapted for television, three of which were British adaptations. The first of these, in 1949, was produced by the BBC.[50] The second was produced in 1959,[51] by ITV. Both of those productions aired with Christie's original title. The third and most recent British adaptation aired as And Then There Were None on BBC One in December 2015, as a drama serial broadcast on three consecutive nights, produced in cooperation with Acorn Media and Agatha Christie Productions. The 2015 production adhered more closely to the original plot, though there were several differences to backstories and actual murders on the island, and was the first English language film adaptation to feature an ending similar to that of the novel. It was directed by Craig Viveiros and adapted for television by Sarah Phelps.[52]

An American TV movie aired on NBC 18 January 1959. It was directed by Paul Bogart, and starred Barry Jones and Nina Foch.

There have been many foreign-language TV adaptations:

• A Portuguese-language version for Brazilian television, broadcast 16 February 1957, titled O Caso dos Dez Negrinhos
• O Caso dos Dez Negrinhos, a 1963 episode of the Brazilian anthology series Grande Teatro Tupi
• A West German television production, Zehn kleine Negerlein, which aired in 1969
• Dix petits nègres, a 1970 episode of the French anthology series Au théâtre ce soir
• Achra Abid Zghar (1974, translation: Ten Little Slaves), a Télé Liban TV series directed by Jean Fayyad, adapted for television by Latifeh Moultaka
• Deka Mikroi Negroi, a 1978 episode of the Greek anthology series To theatro tis Defteras
• A free Spanish adaptation made by RTVE in 2011 as the two-parter The mystery of the ten strangers for the second season of Los misterios de Laura
• Achra Abid Zghar (2014, translation: Ten Little Slaves), an MTV Lebanon television production
• Soshite daremo inakunatta (そして誰もいなくなった), a Japanese-language adaptation by Shukei Nagasaka (長坂秀佳, Nagasaka Shukei) set in modern times, aired 25 and 26 March 2017 on TV Asahi in Japan. It was directed by Seiji Izumi and adapted for television by Hideka Nagasaka.[53][54]
• Ils etaient dix, a French six-part miniseries produced by M6 and aired in 2020, set on a tropical island in present time

In 2010, American animated TV series Family Guy adapted the story as And Then There Were Fewer.

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 was ported to the Wii console. The game adheres closely to the novel in most respects, and uses some of its dialogue verbatim, but makes significant changes to the plot in order to give the player an active role and allow those familiar with the novel to still experience some suspense. The player assumes the role of Patrick Naracott (brother of Fred Naracott, who is involved in a newly created subplot), who is stranded with the others when his boat is scuttled. The killer's identity and motives are different, the means of three of the murders were changed (while still corresponding to the rhyme), and it is possible for the player to save two of the victims, with the game branching into four different endings depending on which of the two are saved.

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.

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.[55]

The 2014 live action comedy-crime and murder mystery TV web series, Ten Little Roosters produced by American company Rooster Teeth is largely inspired by And Then There Were None.[56] It featured an interactive murder mystery component where viewers guess who will die next, and how, in order to win prizes. The premise of the show is nearly identical to the book, but with a lighter, more comedic tone and the plot is structured so that anyone having read And Then There Were None would be unable to apply their knowledge of the book's plot twists.