The Mystery of The Blue Train - Publication History

Publication History

• 1928, William Collins and Sons (London), March 29, 1928, Hardcover, 296 pp
• 1928, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 1928, Hardcover, 306 pp
• 1932, William Collins and Sons, February 1932 (As part of the Agatha Christie Omnibus of Crime along with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Seven Dials Mystery and The Sittaford Mystery), Hardcover (Priced at seven shillings and sixpence)
• 1940, Pocket Books (New York), Paperback, 276 pp
• 1948, Penguin Books, Paperback, (Penguin number 691), 250 pp
• 1954, Pan Books, Paperback (Pan number 284)
• 1956, Pocket Books (New York), Paperback, 194 pp
• 1958, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), Paperback, 248 pp
• 1972, Greenway edition of collected works (William Collins), Hardcover, 286 pp, ISBN 0-00-231524-6
• 1973, Greenway edition of collected works (Dodd Mead), Hardcover, 286 pp, ISBN 0-396-06817-0
• 1974, Dodd, Mead and Company (As part of the Murder on Board along with Death in the Clouds and What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!), Hardcover, 601 pp, ISBN 0-396-06992-4
• 1976, Ulverscroft Large-print Edition, Hardcover, 423pp, OCLC 2275078
• 2007, Poirot Facsimile Edition (Facsimile of 1928 UK First Edition), HarperCollins, March 5, 2007, Hardback ISBN 0-00-723438-4

The writing of this book (part of which took place on the Canary Islands in early 1927) was an ordeal for Christie. The events of 1926 with the death of her mother, her husband's infidelity and her breakdown and ten-day disappearance had left a deep psychological scar and now separated from Archie Christie and in need of funds she turned back to writing. The story did not come easily to her and she referred to this novel in her autobiography stating that she "always hated it". Her biography recounts how the total number of words in the book were carefully tallied up, showing what an ordeal Christie found it to be. It had its effect on her in the middle of wartime when, nervous that at some future point she might be in need of funds and need a fallback, she wrote Sleeping Murder and locked it securely in a bank vault for future publication. Curtain was written at the same time and similarly locked away but publication of this latter book would not be possible until the end of her writing career as it recounts the death of Poirot.

The Mystery of the Blue Train was first serialised in the London evening newspaper The Star in thirty-eight un-illustrated instalments from Wednesday, February 1 to Thursday, March 15, 1928. The entire first two chapters were omitted from the serialisation and it therefore contained only thirty-four chapters. There were slight amendments to the text, either to make sense of the openings of an instalment (e.g. changing "She then..." to "Katherine then..."), or omitting small sentences or words, especially in the opening instalment where several paragraphs were missed. A reference to the continental Daily Mail at the start of chapter six (chapter eight in the book) was changed to "the newspaper" to avoid mentioning a competitor to The Star. Three chapters were given different names: chapter nine (eleven in the book) was called Something Good instead of Murder, chapter twenty-six (twenty-eight in the book) was called Poirot hedges instead of Poirot plays the Squirrel and chapter twenty-eight (chapter thirty in the book) was called Katherine's letters instead of Miss Viner gives judgement. The final chapter, called By the Sea in the book, was unnamed in the serialisation.

This is the only major work by Agatha Christie where the UK first edition carries no copyright or publication date.