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For example: And Then There Were None was first called Ten Little Indians;
The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side was later shortened to The Mirror Crack'd;
Death in the Air is also known as Death in the Clouds;
What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw is also known as 4:50 from Paddington.
Why are there so many alternate title for Christie's novels?
This is because Christie was published in both the United States and the United Kingdom. These are the two largest markets for English-language books, and in the mid-20th century when Christie was writing, most publishers operated in one of these markets and not the other. So the variant titles of Christie’s works are due to the choices made by different publishers in the two markets.
Amalgamation in the publishing industry has since resulted in a few large companies that publish on both sides of the Atlantic, so variant titles are now much rarer.
For nearly all her career, Christie published with Collins in the UK and Dodd, Mead and Company in the US, and many of her books have titles that vary between the two publishers:
| Year | US title (Dodd, Mead & Company) | UK title (Collins Crime Club) |
|---|---|---|
| 1931 | Murder at Hazelmoor | The Sittaford Mystery |
| 1933 | The Tuesday Club Murders | The Thirteen Problems |
| 1933 | Thirteen at Dinner | Lord Edgware Dies |
| 1934 | Murder in the Calais Coach | Murder on the Orient Express |
| 1934 | The Boomerang Clue | Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? |
| 1934 | Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective | Parker Pyne Investigates |
| 1934 | Murder in Three Acts | Three Act Tragedy |
| 1935 | Death in the Air | Death in the Clouds |
| 1937 | Dead Man’s Mirror | Murder in the Mews |
| 1937 | Poirot Loses a Client | Dumb Witness |
| 1938 | Murder for Christmas | Hercule Poirot’s Christmas |
| 1939 | Easy to Kill | Murder is Easy |
| 1939 | And Then There Were None | Ten Little N— |
| 1941 | The Patriotic Murders | One, Two, Buckle My Shoe |
| 1942 | Murder in Retrospect | Five Little Pigs |
| 1945 | Remembered Death | Sparkling Cyanide |
| 1948 | There is a Tide … | Taken at the Flood |
| 1952 | Murder with Mirrors | They Do It with Mirrors |
| 1953 | Funerals are Fatal | After the Funeral |
| 1955 | So Many Steps to Death | Destination Unknown |
| 1955 | Hickory Dickory Death | Hickory Dickory Dock |
| 1957 | What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw! | 4.50 from Paddington |
| 1962 | The Mirror Crack’d | The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side |
In a few cases paperback editions had further variants. Note that in this period hardback and paperback editions were handled by different firms.
| Original (US) title | Year | Publisher | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| Murder for Christmas | 1947 | Avon Books | A Holiday for Murder |
| Mrs. McGinty’s Dead | 1952 | Detective Book Club | Blood Will Tell |
| The Patriotic Murders | 1953 | Dell Books | An Overdose of Death |
| The Hollow | 1954 | Dell Books | Murder after Hours |
| After the Funeral | 1963 | Fontana Books | Murder at the Gallop |
| And Then There Were None | 1964 | Pocket Books | Ten Little Indians |
So why do publishers do this? Well, the title of a book is part of its marketing, like its cover picture and blurb, and so different markets may benefit from different titles. Some of the reasons for this variation are guessable:
However, most of the reasons seem to be lost to history. I did look in Christie’s An Autobiography and some more recent biographies and found nothing relevant to this question.
It should be emphasized that there is nothing particularly unusual about Christie in this respect: many other works of popular fiction have titles that vary trans-Atlantically. For example, if we look at Christie’s contemporary John Dickson Carr, we find:
| Year | US title (Harper) | UK title (Hamish Hamilton) |
|---|---|---|
| 1935 | The Three Coffins | The Hollow Man |
| 1936 | The Magic Lantern Murders | The Punch and Judy Murders |
| 1937 | The Peacock Feather Murders | The Ten Teacups |
| 1938 | The Crossbow Murder | The Judas Window |
| 1939 | Fatal Descent | Drop to His Death |
| 1939 | The Problem of the Green Capsule | The Black Spectacles |
| 1940 | Nine—And Death Makes Ten | Murder in the Submarine Zone |
| 1941 | Death Turns the Tables | The Seat of the Scornful |
| 1941 | Cross of Murder | Seeing is Believing |
| 1942 | Death and the Gilded Man | The Gilded Man |
| 1945 | Lord of the Sorcerers | The Curse of the Bronze Lamp |
Carr’s biographer Douglas Greene noted a few cases where Harper asked for a change of title to better convey the nature of the work to the American public:
Carr’s original title for The Problem of the Green Capsule was The Black Spectacles, based on the spectacles that the murderer wore while committing the crime. One of the themes of the story, moreover, is that “all witnesses, metaphorically, wear black spectacles.” Harpers, however, objected that the title was not particularly intriguing for a novel of crime and mystery. Carr then suggested The Problem of the Green Capsule, and Harpers agreed.† […]
Harpers did not get the point of Carr’s title, The Seat of the Scornful, which did not seem to them right for a detective novel, and before even seeing Carr’s typescript asked for an alternate. Carr apparently did not send an acceptable suggestion, for Harpers devised the American title, Death Turns the Tables, which does describe a part of the book but misses Carr's theme.‡
Douglas G. Greene (1995). John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles, chapters 7 & 11. Cincinatti: Crippen & Landru.
† But in a footnote Greene added, “The letters are so vague, however, that they might be read to indicate that Carr came up with a list of titles—Harpers picked one, Hamilton another.” ‡ Carr’s title quotes from Psalm 1:1 “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.”
