Agatha Christie? James Beasley Simpson? Joe Bushkin? Leonard Lyons? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: Successful collaboration is difficult to achieve for many creators. The outstanding mystery writer Agatha Christie once referred to the difficulty of splitting royalties while explaining why she did not have coauthors. Would you please help me to find her remark?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest citation located by QI appeared in a compilation of quotations published in 1957 by James Beasley Simpson. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:1
“I’ve always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.“
Agatha Christie, British mystery writer, news summaries of March 15, 1955.
QI has not yet found a newspaper article containing this statement on the date mentioned by Simpson, but electronic archives are incomplete. Also, QI does not have access to all pertinent databases.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
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