Literary Appearances
The true first appearance of Mrs Oliver was a brief appearance in the short story The Case of the Discontented Soldier which was first published, along with four other stories in the August 1932 issue of the U.S. version of Cosmopolitan magazine (issue number 554) under the sub-heading of Are You Happy? If Not Consult Mr. Parker Pyne. The story first appeared in the UK in issue 614 of Woman's Pictorial on 15 October 1932, and was later published in book form in 1934 as Parker Pyne Investigates (titled Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective in the USA). Within this story she appeared as part of Pyne's unorthodox team of freelance assistants. She also briefly appears in The Case of the Rich Woman, also published in the same book.
All her subsequent appearances (save The Pale Horse) were in Poirot novels:
- Cards on the Table (1936)
- Mrs McGinty's Dead (1952)
- Dead Man's Folly (1956)
- The Pale Horse (1961) — Oliver's only appearance in a Christie novel without Poirot
- Third Girl (1966)
- Hallowe'en Party (1969)
- Elephants Can Remember (1972)
An advert for Ariadne Oliver's With Vinegar and Brown Paper (as with Agatha Christie using nursery rhyme references) appears in the Frontispiece of Mark Gatiss's book The Devil in Amber along with other adverts for made up books.
Read more about this topic: Ariadne Oliver
Famous quotes containing the words literary and/or appearances:
“England has the most sordid literary scene I’ve ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy’s writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They’re all scratching each other’s backs.”
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“The appearances of goodness and merit often meet with a greater reward from the world than goodness and merit themselves.”
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