The Secret of Chimneys - Publication History

Publication History

• 1925, John Lane (The Bodley Head), June 1925, Hardback, 310 pp
• 1925, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), Hardback, 310 pp
• 1947, Dell Books (New York), Paperback (Dell mapback number 199), 224 pp
• 1956, Pan Books, 1956, Paperback (Pan number 366), 222 pp
• 1958, Pan Books, 1958, Paperback (Great Pan G106)
• 1958, The Bodley Head, 1958, Hardback, 224 pp
• 1978, Panther Books, 1978, Paperback, 224 pp
• 1989, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), 1989, Paperback, 272 pp
• 2007, Facsimile of 1925 UK first edition (HarperCollins), November 5, 2007, Hardcover, ISBN 0-00-726521-2

This was the last novel published under Christie's six book contract with the Bodley Head which had been agreed back in 1919. Christie had signed without literary agent representation and had come to resent its terms which she stated were unfair. Her future books in the UK were all published by William Collins & Sons (with the sole exception of The Hound of Death) once a new and more favourable contract had been signed with them by her newly-appointed agent, Edmund Cork of Hughes Massey. Cork became a lifelong friend.

This novel was much admired by her future mother-in-law, Marguerite Mallowan, who penned a note in a leather-bound copy she commissioned of this book together with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Hollow. The note read "Passing a bookshop while I was in Paris in 1932, I bought The Secret of Chimneys, now almost unobtainable. I had just heard of Agatha Christie. Though not a reader of detective stories, her book captivated me so much that I never left it until I had finished it. Soon after she married my son, whom she had met in Mesopotamia while he was working under Sir Leonard Woolley. Later I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd which, I think, made her reputation universal. Lastly came The Hollow, a book dear to me as revealing her artistic, simple and sincere temperament. This is the reason for my choice of these three books to be bound together. I wish them to be a testimony of my admiration for her art, and above all, of my gratitude for her loving kindness through all the years I have known her". The copy of the book was sold at auction in September, 2006.