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The Annotated Christie?

johnwaynefreak 25 Jan 12 at 1:16 p.m. GMT

Posting in another forum, a though struck me:

Going off at a tangent, I wonder how many years it will be before Christie stories require an introduction by irrelevant academics to provide an historical context, and footnotes explaining £,s,d. as well as just what a Belgian ex-policeman is doing at Styles St. Mary in the early 20th century. I don't for one moment think they're at all necessary at this moment in time, but just when will it be worthwhile to annotate Christie in the same way that Leslie S. Klinger produced his volumes of annotated Sherlock Holmes. All opinions welcome!

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treplag 26 Jan 12 at 10:10 p.m. GMT

I, for one, wouldn't mind footnotes translating Poirot's ejaculations and mutterings from the French.  Not to mention identifications of places and things in Mesopotamia.

NightRayDuck 26 Jan 12 at 10:03 p.m. GMT

I've been wondering if introductions like these were written to secure copyrights to the particular edition. That's only my random paranoia, though.

On a tangent that's more relevant to your idea - some foreign publishers prefer to always have their own academics write an introduction to their foreign-language edition. I remember reading one full-length novel in another language, the actual story written by Christie took some 170 pages in that edition, and the introduction by the academic took 20 pages.