The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by William Collins & Sons in June 1926 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company on the 19th of the same month. It features Hercule Poirot as the lead detective. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.
It is one of Christie's best known and most controversial novels, its innovative twist ending having a significant impact on the genre. The short biography of Christie which is included in the present UK printings of all of her books states that this novel is her masterpiece. Howard Haycraft, in his seminal 1941 work, Murder for Pleasure, included the novel in his "cornerstones" list of the most influential crime novels ever written. The character of Caroline Sheppard was later acknowledged by Christie as a possible precursor to her famous detective Miss Marple.
Read more about The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd: Plot Summary, Characters, Literary Significance and Reception, In Popular Culture, International Titles
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“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)
“I say that Roger Casement
Did what he had to do,
He died upon the gallows
But that is nothing new.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)