6.8 /10 1 Votes
Cover artist Not known Publication date October 1973 ISBN 0-00-211681-2 Publisher William Collins Preceded by Postern of Fate | 3.4/5 Language English Media type Print (hardback) Originally published October 1973 Genre Poetry Country United Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Pages 128 pp (first edition, hardback) Similar Agatha Christie books, Other books |
Poems is the second of two collections of poetry by crime writer Agatha Christie, the first being The Road of Dreams in January 1925. It was published in October 1973 at the same time as the novel Postern of Fate, the final work she ever wrote.
The book is divided into two volumes with the first part, which occupies over half of the book, being titled Volume I and is stated on the copyright page to be a reprint of the contents of The Road of Dreams (incorrectly dated to 1924) however there are several differences between the two publications. They are:
The remainder of the 1973 publication, titled Volume II was, like its predecessor, divided into four sections:
One of the poems in the sequence Love Poems and Others is entitled To M.E.L.M. in Absence. The dedicatee of this poem is Christie's second husband Max Mallowan or Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan to give him his full name. It is not known when the poem was written however the only prolonged absence the married coupled ever suffered was in the Second World War when Max was sent to Egypt with the British Council in February 1942 and after several years and different postings in North Africa, did not return home until May 1945. Both Christie's autobiography and her official biography are silent on the subject of whether or not this poem dates from this period.
Remembrance, another poem in the same sequence, is a poem about the loss of a loved one and was reprinted in a small sixteen-page volume of the same name in 1988 by the Souvenir Press with illustrations by Richard Allen (ISBN 0-285-62876-3)
The following year, the Souvenir Press published another of the poems from the collection, My Flower Garden, again in a small sixteen-page volume with illustrations by Richard Allen (ISBN 0-285-62888-7)