Research Methods
To conduct thorough and valid research on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, several methods and resources were used. To begin my investigation, I simply watched a documentary about Agatha Christie titled The Mystery of Agatha Christie with David Suchet from PBS. This documentary opened my eyes primarily to the life of the author as well as the secret notebooks. With this foundational knowledge, I could dig deeper into the history of this specific book.
I began by researching the composition history. I hoped to find the primary sources of the notebooks themselves but with no success. While there were several photos of pages and excerpts available, I was not thoroughly content with these to use for my research, especially since they all did not deal with And Then There Were None specifically. Ultimately, I was able to find two books by John Curran by searching “Agatha Christie Notebooks” in the Stanislaus State Library database. The books, Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making and Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making; More Stories and Secrets from Her Notebooks, served as staple sources in my research because they detailed much of the process of the book as well as told the extended story behind the novel itself.
I then moved on to the publication history of the novel. I found several sources about the initial publication and the titling that helped my research. I also used GoodReads to find covers and the vast number of publications of the book. I used Agatha Christie’s website itself for more information and quotes on the book itself. Many of the sources I found came through the JSTOR database and they frequently were critical of the initial publication title. Other sources for the publication history detailed the number of languages the novel was translated in and how many sales it had to date.
When it came to the reception history, it became apparent that there was a plethora of information that I could discuss. The first being how many adaptations there were. I found this from the Agatha Christie website itself and began to research additional information on the reception of those adaptations as well. I also found the original New York Times reviews of the novel in 1940 from the New York Times Historical Newspaper database that offered insight into the reception of the novel when it came out. Continuing the search for what the masses thought and continue to think of the novel I looked at the reviews of it on Amazon and GoodReads. Additional sources from Google and databases offered critiques of the book.
I additionally relied on videos I found for my research, many of which I have embedded in this website. I think the vast quantity of information I discovered is best conveyed by blending many forms of media on this site. Ultimately, the research of this novel took many hours to sort and dig for, but the result was a better view of the history of And Then There Were None and a greater appreciation for the piece.