The A.B.C. Murders - Publication History

Publication History

• 1936, Collins Crime Club (London), January 6, 1936, Hardcover, 256 pp
• 1936, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), February 14, 1936, Hardcover, 306 pp
• 1941, Pocket Books (New York), Paperback, (Pocket number 88)
• 1948, Penguin Books, Paperback, (Penguin number 683), 224 pp
• 1958, Pan Books, Paperback (Great Pan 95), 191 pp
• 1962, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), Paperback, 192 pp
• 1976, Greenway edition of collected works (William Collins), Hardcover, 251 pp, ISBN 0-00-231014-7
• 1978, Greenway edition of collected works (Dodd Mead), Hardcover, 251 pp
• 1979, Pan Books, Paperback, 191 pp
• 1980, Collins Crime Club (London), Golden Jubilee of Crime Club with introduction by Julian Symons, Hardcover, 224 pp, ISBN 0-00-231323-5
• 1980, Ulverscroft Large-print edition, Hardback, ISBN 0-7089-0590-0
• 2006, Poirot Facsimile Edition (Facsimile of 1936 UK First Edition), HarperCollins, September 4, 2006, Hardcover ISBN 0-00-723443-0

The first true publication of The A.B.C. Murders occurred in the US with an abridged version appearing in the November 1935 (Volume XCIX, Number 5) issue of Cosmopolitan magazine with illustrations by Frederic Mizen.

The UK serialisation was in sixteen parts in the Daily Express from Monday, November 28 to Thursday December 12, 1935. All of the instalments carried an illustration by Steven Spurrier. This version did not contain any chapter divisions and totally omitted the foreword as well as chapters twenty-six, thirty-two and thirty-five. In addition most of chapters seven and twenty were missing. Along with other abridgements throughout the novel, this serialisation omitted almost forty percent of the text that appeared in the published novel.