The Hound of Death
The dog of death is a collection of twelve short stories by Agatha Christie, who first appeared in 1933 in the UK. Unusually, this collection did not appear in Agatha Christie's master publisher, William Collins & Sons, but at Odhams Press. You could not just buy it, but only against trade coupons (see publication of the collection in the UK).
It is also the first time that a published collection in the United Kingdom did not appear in the United States.
In Germany, the collection appeared in 2010 as a band of 41 published by the French publisher Hachette Collections The official collection of Agatha Christie. The individual stories were also previously been published in German (see German first publications of the stories ).
It is also unusual in that it is stories that deal with the supernatural and the fate and little with the work of detectives.
Known, this collection is still made , but it is the first book that contains Agatha Christie's most famous short story Witness for the Prosecution. On the basis of this short story the author wrote the homonymous award-winning stage play. The play was made into a film starring Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich for the cinema and twice for television.
The short stories
References to other works
The poem that Mr Winburn quotes The lamp in the short story, comes from the Rubaiyats Omar Khayyam by Edward FitzGerald in the translation of:
In her novel The Shadow Hand, the author uses a different poem from this poem that gives the novel its title. The quatrains were very popular and known in the English-speaking world.
Important issues
First publications of the stories
Only a few stories have their first publications in journals yet known:
In the U.S., appeared The Witness for the Prosecution on 31 January 1925 in Flynn 's Weekly (Volume IV, No. 2) under the title Traitor Hands.
Publication of the collection in the UK
The book could not easily be bought in the shop, but should be exchanged only for the coupons weekly The Passing Show.
The coupons were printed in editions 81 to 83 ( from the 7th to October 21, 1933 ) as part of an advertising campaign. In exchange for the Cpoupons and an additional contribution of 7 shillings, the customer received six books. The other five books were: Jungle Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Sun Will Shine by May Edginton, The veil'd Delight by Marjorie Bowen, The Venner Crime by John Rhode and Q33 by George Goodchild.
An output for sale in the shop appeared in 1936 in Christie's tribe Publisher Collins Crime Club.
German first publications of the stories
The stories of the collection published in German as follows:
With:
With:
With:
With:
With: