This article accompanies the fable
Poison Pen Letters


The worst poison pen letter of them all?

Ten Little Niggers (1939) is regarded by many as her finest mystery and it is said to be the best-selling of her novels. But it also revealed Agatha Christie as hopelessly insensitive on racial matters (see the book cover below left).

American publishers rejected the title and so Christie renamed it And Then There Were None, but later Broadway productions (1944-) undid this good deed by retitling it Ten Little Indians.

Worse, racist artwork persisted in the U.K. well into the 1960's (the book cover below right is from 1963-67). At the time of writing this, you could still find this book cover on Amazon, even if this edition cannot be purchased. Was whoever designed (and approved) this Golliwog image back then for Fontana simply naive or were they simply cynical?