Editing Agatha Christie (section)

=== Titles ===

Many of Christie's works from 1940 onward have titles drawn from literature, with the original context of the title typically printed as an [[epigraph (literature)|epigraph]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Hopkins |first=Lisa |title=Shakespearean Allusion in Crime Fiction |publisher=[[Springer Publishing|Springer]] |year=2016 |isbn=978-1137538741|editor-last=Hopkins|editor-first=L. |location=Cham, Switzerland |pages=63–103 |chapter=Who Owns the Wood? Appropriating A Midsummer Night's Dream}}</ref>

The inspirations for some of Christie's titles include:
* [[William Shakespeare]]'s works: ''[[Sad Cypress]]'', ''[[By the Pricking of My Thumbs]]'', ''[[Taken at the Flood|There is a Tide{{nbsp}}...]]'', ''[[Absent in the Spring]]'', and ''The Mousetrap'', for example. Osborne notes that "Shakespeare is the writer most quoted in the works of Agatha Christie";<ref name=":16"/>{{Rp|164}}
* The Bible: ''[[Evil Under the Sun]]'', ''[[The Burden]]'', and ''[[Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse|The Pale Horse]]'';
* Other works of literature: ''[[The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side]]'' (from [[Tennyson]]'s "[[The Lady of Shalott]]"), ''[[The Moving Finger]]'' (from [[Edward FitzGerald (poet)|Edward FitzGerald]]'s translation of the ''[[Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám]]''), ''[[The Rose and the Yew Tree]]'' (from [[T. S. Eliot]]'s ''[[Four Quartets]]''), ''Postern of Fate'' (from [[James Elroy Flecker]]'s "Gates of Damascus"), ''Endless Night'' (from [[William Blake]]'s "[[Auguries of Innocence]]"), ''N or M?'' (from the ''[[Book of Common Prayer]]''), and ''[[Come, Tell Me How You Live]]'' (from [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''[[Through the Looking-Glass]]'').

Christie biographer [[Gillian Gill]] said, "Christie's writing has the sparseness, the directness, the narrative pace, and the universal appeal of the fairy story, and it is perhaps as modern fairy stories for grown-up children that Christie's novels succeed."<ref name=":10"/>{{Rp|208}} Reflecting a juxtaposition of innocence and horror, numerous Christie titles were drawn from well-known children's [[nursery rhyme]]s: ''And Then There Were None'' (from "Ten Little Niggers", a rhyme also published as "[[Ten Little Indians]]", both of which were also used for the book's title in some printings),<ref>{{Cite book |last=McAllister |first=Pam |title=The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie |publisher=[[Continuum International Publishing Group|Continuum]] |year=2001 |isbn=0-8264-1375-7 |editor-last=Riley |editor-first=Dick |edition=2nd |location=New York City; London |pages=144–45 |chapter=Ten Little Who? |editor2-last=McAllister |editor2-first=Pam |editor3-last=Cassiday |editor3-first=Bruce |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zd3yIaoBjrMC&pg=PA144 |access-date=21 August 2020 |archive-date=2 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210902084912/https://books.google.com/books?id=zd3yIaoBjrMC&pg=PA144 |url-status=live}}</ref> ''[[One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (novel)|One, Two, Buckle My Shoe]]'' (from "[[One, Two, Buckle My Shoe]]"), ''Five Little Pigs'' (from "[[This Little Piggy]]"), ''[[Crooked House]]'' (from "[[There Was a Crooked Man]]"), ''[[A Pocket Full of Rye]]'' (from "[[Sing a Song of Sixpence]]"), ''[[Hickory Dickory Dock (novel)|Hickory Dickory Dock]]'' (from "[[Hickory Dickory Dock]]"), and ''[[Three Blind Mice and Other Stories|Three Blind Mice]]'' (from "[[Three Blind Mice]]").<ref name=":10"/>{{Rp|207–08}}