Crime and genre’s best writers at the centre of new free exhibition
Agatha Christie’s typewriter and Dictaphone have gone on display as part of a crime fiction exhibition which runs until later this year.
The typescript to her final Poirot novel, Curtain, that was so top secret it was kept in a bank vault for 30 years until its eventual publication – in 1975 – is also on show during Murder By The Book.
The author’s 1937 Remington typewriter, her Dictaphone and the typescript of Curtain are on loan from the Christie Archive Trust.
Also on loan from the trust for the exhibition are her draft notebooks from the writing of Curtain and Witness For The Prosecution.
The exhibitio celebrates
20th Century British crime fiction, 100 of the most famous, influential and best-selling crime novels in UK history, as well as other consequential works that are now long out of print.
It also features novelist Wilkie Collins’ writing desk, as well as the library’s first edition copy of his seminal work The Moonstone.
Award-winning crime author Nicola Upson, curator of the exhibition, said: “This exhibition is a glorious selection of the novels that have influenced the genre and made household names of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Jane Tennison and Inspector Morse.
“We look at the brilliant ideas, atmospheric settings, vivid characters, the dark and dangerous themes – and those perfect, unguessable endings.
“Within each section, Golden Age classics sit alongside books by contemporary authors, revealing what these stories have in common and how much the genre has evolved.
“If you love crime podcasts or programmes, you’re going to love this exhibition.
“There are books in the exhibition which have pioneered the genre; you’ll meet the detectives that we’ve grown to know and love via extraordinary novels and TV adaptations; and you’ll also see the first use of things like forensics in crime fiction, which perhaps started much earlier than you might think.”
Murder By The Book: A Celebration of 20th Century Crime Fiction is open to the public at Cambridge University Library until August 24. Entry is free.
If you love crime podcasts or programmes, you’re going to love this exhibition – crime writer and curator Nicola Upson