- NAME: Agatha Christie
- OCCUPATION: Author, Playwright
- BIRTH DATE: September 15, 1890
- DEATH DATE: January 12, 1976
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Torquay, Devon, England, United Kingdom
- PLACE OF DEATH: Cholsey, England, United Kingdom
- FULL NAME: Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie
- AKA: Mary Westmacott
- MAIDEN NAME: Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller
- AKA: Agatha Miller
- AKA: Agatha Christie
- NICKNAME: "Queen of Mystery"
- AKA: Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie
- NICKNAME: "Queen of Crime"
BEST KNOWN FOR
Agatha Christie was a mystery writer who was one of the world's top-selling authors.
Agatha Christie is reputably known throughout the world as the “Queen of Crime”.
Dame Agatha Christie, (15 September 1890 - 12 January 1976)
Agatha Christie was an English writer of crime and romantic novels. She is best remembered for her detective stories including the two diverse characters of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. She is considered to be the best selling writer of all time. Only the Bible is known to have outstripped her collected sales of roughly four billion world wide copies. Her works have been translated into more languages than any other individual writer.
Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, Devon 1890 to Clarissa Margaret Boehmer and a wealthy American stockbroker. She was brought up by both her mother and her sister. In the First World war, she trained and worked as a nurse helping to treat wounded soldiers. She also became educated in the field of pharmacy. She recalled her time as a nurse with great fondness, saying it was one of the most rewarding jobs she ever undertook.
Agatha Christie's married an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps - Archibald Christie in December 1914. The marriage was somewhat turbulent and ended in divorce in 1928, two years after Archibald had begun an affair. In 1926, Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days. The circumstances were never really resolved and it created widespread media interest in the disappearance of this famous novelist. She was eventually discovered in a Harrogate hotel eleven days later. Though Agatha Christie never said why, it was probably a combination of shock over her mother's death and the discovery of her husband's affair. In 1930, she married her second husband, Max Mallowan. This marriage was happier, though her only child, Rosalind Hicks, came from her first marriage.
Writing Career of Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie began writing in 1920, after the end of the First World War. Her first story was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, (1920). This featured the soon to be famous detective - Hercule Poirot, who at the time was portrayed as a Belgian refugee from the Great War. The book sold well and helped meet the public's great appetite for detective novels. It was a genre that had been popularised through Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories at the turn of the century.
Agatha Christie went on to write over 40 novels featuring the proud and immaculate Hercule Poirot. Like Conan Doyle, Christie had no great love for her own creation - Poirot seemed to be admired by the public more than the writer herself. Agatha Christie preferred her other great detective - the quiet but effective old lady - Miss Marple. The character of Miss Marple was based on the traditional English country lady - and her own relatives.
The plot of Agatha Christies novels could be described as formulaic. Murders were committed by ingenious methods - often involving poison, which Agatha Christie had great knowledge of. After interrogating all the main suspects, the detective would bring all the participants into some drawing room before explaining who was the murderer. The psychological suspense of the novels, and the fact readers feel they have a good chance of solving the crime undoubtedly added to the popularity of the books.
During the Second World War, Christie worked in the pharmacy of the University College London, which gave her ideas for some of her murder methods. After the war, her books continued to grow in international popularity. In 1952, her play The Mousetrap was debuted at the Ambassador's Theatre in London, and has been performed without a break ever since. Her success led to her being honoured in the New Year's honour list. In 1971 she was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire.
She died in 1976 aged 85.
Synopsis
Born on September 15, 1890, in Torquay, England, Agatha Christie published her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920, and went on to become one of the most famous writers in history, with mysteries like Murder at the Vicarage,Partners in Crime and Sad Cypress. She sold billions of copies of her work, and was also a noted playwright and romance author. She died on January 12, 1976.
QUOTES
"People often ask me what made me take up writing ... I found myself making up stories and acting the different parts. There's nothing like boredom to make you write. So by the time I was 16 or 17, I'd written quite a number of short stories and one long, dreary novel. By the time I was 21, I finished the first book of mine ever to be published."
– Agatha Christie
Background
Best-selling author Agatha Christie was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller on September 15, 1890, in Torquay, Devon, in the southwest part of England. The youngest of three siblings, she was educated at home by her mother, who encouraged her daughter to write. As a child, Christie enjoyed fantasy play and creating characters, and, when she was 16, moved to Paris for a time to study vocals and piano.
In 1914, she wed Colonel Archibald Christie, a Royal Flying Corps pilot, and took up nursing during World War I. She published her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920; the story focused on the murder of a rich heiress and introduced readers to one of Christie's most famous characters—Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.
Fame and Tumult
In 1926, Christie released The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, a hit which was later marked as a genre classic and one of the author's all-time favorites. She dealt with tumult that same year, however, as her mother died and her husband revealed that he was in a relationship with another woman. Traumatized by the revelation, Christie disappeared only to be discovered by authorities several days later at a Harrogate hotel, registered under the name of her husband's mistress.
Christie would recover, with her and Archibald divorcing in 1928. In 1930, she married archaeology professor Max Mallowan, with whom she travelled on several expeditions, later recounting her trips in the 1946 memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live. The year of her new nuptials also saw the release of Murder at the Vicarage, which became another classic and introduced readers to Miss Jane Marple, an enquiring village lady.
Cast of Characters
Poirot and Marple are Christie's most well-known detectives, with the two featured in dozens of novels and short stories. Poirot made the most appearances in Christie's work in titles that includedAckroyd, The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) and Death in the Clouds (1935). Miss Marple has been featured in books like The Moving Finger (1942) and A Pocket Full of Rye (1953), and been played on screen by actresses like Angela Lansbury, Helen Hayesand Geraldine McEwan. Other notable Christie characters include Tuppence and Tommy Beresford, Colonel Race, Parker Pyne and Ariadne Oliver.
Sold More Than Two Billion Copies
Writing well into her later years, Christie wrote more than 70 detective novels as well as short fiction. Though she also wrote romance novels like Unfinished Portrait (1934) and A Daughter's a Daughter (1952) under the name Mary Westmacott, Christie's success as an author of sleuth stories has earned her titles like the "Queen of Crime" and the "Queen of Mystery." Christie can also be considered a queen of all publishing genres as she is one of the top-selling authors in history, with her combined works selling more than 2 billion copies worldwide.
Christie was a renowned playwright as well, with works like The Hollow (1951) and Verdict(1958). Her play The Mousetrap opened in 1952 at the Ambassador Theatre and—at more than 8,800 showings during 21 years—holds the record for the longest unbroken run in a London theater. Additionally, several of Christie's works have become popular movies, including Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978).
Christie was made a dame in 1971. In 1974,
she made her last public appearance for the opening night of the play version of Murder on the Orient Express. Christie died on January 12, 1976.
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Chronological List of Agatha Christie Books
Click on Title to read a description of each novel:
1920 The Mysterious Affair at Styles (introducing Hercule Poirot, Chief Inspector Japp and Captain Hastings)
1922 The Secret Adversary (introducing Tommy and Tuppence)
1923 Murder on the Links
1924 The Man in the Brown Suit
1925 The Secret of Chimneys
1926 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
1927 The Big Four
1928 The Mystery of the Blue Train
1929 The Seven Dials Mystery
1930 The Murder at the Vicarage (introducing Jane Marple)
1931 The Sittaford Mystery (also known as Murder at Hazelmore)
1932 Peril at End House
1933 Lord Edgware Dies (also known as Thirteen at Dinner)1934 Murder on the Orient Express
1934 Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (also known as The Boomerang Clue)
1935 Three Act Tragedy (also known as Murder in Three Acts)
1935 Death in the Clouds (also known as Death in the Air)
1936 The A.B.C. Murders (also known as The Alphabet Murders)
1936 Murder in Mesopotamia
1936 Cards on the Table
1937 Death on the Nile
1937 Dumb Witness (also known as Poirot Loses a Client and Mystery at Littlegreen House and Murder at Littlegreen House)
1938 Appointment with Death
1938 Hercule Poirot's Christmas (also known as Murder for Christmas and A Holiday for Murder)1939 And Then There Were None (also known as Ten Little Indians and originally as Ten Little Niggers)1939 Murder is Easy (also known as Easy to Kill)
1940 Sad Cypress
1940 One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (also known as An Overdose of Death and The Patriotic Murders)
1941 Evil Under the Sun
1941 N or M?
1942 The Body in the Library
1942 Five Little Pigs (also known as Murder in Retrospect)
1942 The Moving Finger (also known as The Case of the Moving Finger)
1944 Towards Zero (also known as Come and Be Hanged)
1944 Death Comes as the End
1945 Sparkling Cyanide (also known as Remembered Death)
1946 The Hollow (also known as Murder After Hours)
1948 Taken at the Flood (also known as There is a Tide)
1949 Crooked House
1950 A Murder is Announced
1951 They Came to Baghdad
1952 Mrs McGinty's Dead (also known as Blood Will Tell)
1952 They Do It with Mirrors (also known as Murder with Mirrors)
1953 A Pocket Full of Rye
1953 After the Funeral (also known as Funerals are Fatal and Murder at the Gallop)
1954 Destination Unknown (also known as So Many Steps to Death)
1955 Hickory Dickory Dock (also known as Hickory Dickory Death)
1956 Dead Man's Folly
1957 4.50 From Paddington (also known as What Mrs. McGillycuddy Saw and Murder She Said)
1958 Ordeal by Innocence
1959 Cat Among the Pigeons
1961 The Pale Horse
1962 The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (also known as The Mirror Crack'd)
1963 The Clocks
1964 A Caribbean Mystery
1965 At Bertram's Hotel
1966 Third Girl
1967 Endless Night
1968 By the Pricking of My Thumbs
1969 Hallowe'en Party
1970 Passenger to Frankfurt
1971 Nemesis
1972 Elephants Can Remember
1973 Postern of Fate (final Tommy and Tuppence, last novel Christie wrote)
1975 Curtain (Poirot's last case, written four decades earlier)
1976 Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple's last case, written four decades earlier)
Collections of short stories
Main article: List of short stories by Agatha Christie
In addition to her 66 mystery novels, Christie published 153 short stories in her career. Almost all of these were written for publication in fiction magazines with over half of them first appearing in the 1920s. They were then published in book form in various collections, some of which were identical in the UK and US (e.g. The Labours of Hercules) and others where publication took place in one market but not the other.
Twelve of the stories which were published in The Sketch magazine in 1924 under the sub-heading of The Man who was No. 4 were joined in one continuous narrative in the novel The Big Four in 1927. Four other stories, "The Submarine Plans" (1923), "Christmas Adventure" (1923), "The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest" (1932) and "The Second Gong" (1932), were expanded into longer narratives by Christie (respectively The Incredible Theft, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, The Mystery of the Spanish Chest and Dead Man's Mirror, although the shorter versions of all four have also been published in the UK).
Only one short story remains unpublished in the UK in book form: "Three Blind Mice" (1948), on which Christie placed a moratorium whilst the stage play based on the story, The Mousetrap, was still running in the West End. Prior to this the story was published in four instalments in the weekly magazine Woman's Own in the issues dated 31 December 1948 to 21 January 1949 with illustrations by K. J. Petts.
In the US, "Christmas Adventure" is the only story unpublished. The longer version "Adventure of the Christmas Pudding", which is based on "Christmas Adventure", can be found in Double Sin and Other Stories under the name "The Theft of the Royal Ruby".
The main collections in both markets are:
- 1924 Poirot Investigates (Eleven short stories in the UK, fourteen in the US)
- 1929 Partners in Crime (Fifteen short stories; featuring Tommy and Tuppence)
- 1930 The Mysterious Mr. Quin (Twelve short stories; introducing Mr. Harley Quin)
- 1932 The Thirteen Problems (Thirteen short stories; featuring Miss Marple. Published as The Tuesday Club Murders in the US.)
- 1933 The Hound of Death (Twelve short stories –UK only)
- 1934 The Listerdale Mystery (Twelve short stories –UK version, US version published in 2010 in eBook format only)
- 1934 Parker Pyne Investigates (Twelve short stories; introducing Parker Pyne and Ariadne Oliver. Published as Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective in the US.)
- 1937 Murder in the Mews (Four novella-length stories; featuring Hercule Poirot. Published as Dead Man's Mirror in the US, but without The Incredible Theft.)
- 1939 The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories (Nine short stories –US only)
- 1947 The Labours of Hercules (Twelve short stories; featuring Hercule Poirot)
- 1948 The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories (Eleven short stories –US only)
- 1950 Three Blind Mice and Other Stories (Nine short stories –US only)
- 1951 The Under Dog and Other Stories (Nine short stories –US only)
- 1960 The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (Six short stories –UK version, US version published in 2004)
- 1961 Double Sin and Other Stories (Eight short stories –US only)
- 1971 The Golden Ball and Other Stories (Fifteen short stories –US only)
- 1974 Poirot's Early Cases (Eighteen short stories. Published as Hercule Poirot's Early Cases in the US.)
- 1979 Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories (Eight short stories –UK and Commonwealth Countries only)
- 1984 Hercule Poirot's Casebook (Fifty short stories: fourteen from Poirot Investigates, all twelve from The Labours of Hercules, eight from The Under Dog and Other Stories, five from The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories, all four from Murder in the Mews, four from Double Sin and Other Stories, and three from Three Blind Mice and Other Stories)
- 1991 Problem at Pollensa Bay and Other Stories (Eight short stories –UK and Commonwealth Countries only)
- 1997 The Harlequin Tea Set (Nine short stories –US only)
- 1997 While the Light Lasts and Other Stories (Nine short stories –UK and Commonwealth Countries only)
In addition, various collections have been published over the years which re-print short stories which have previously appeared in other collections – e.g. Surprise, Surprise! (1965 in the US). On occasion, besides the reprinted material these collections have sometimes contained the first book printing of an individual story – e.g. The Market Basing Mystery in the UK version of Thirteen for Luck! (1966) which later appeared in the same market in Poirot's Early Cases.
Romance novels written under the pen name Mary Westmacott
- 1930 Giant's Bread
- 1934 Unfinished Portrait
- 1944 Absent in the Spring
- 1948 The Rose and the Yew Tree
- 1952 A Daughter's a Daughter
- 1956 The Burden
Plays
- 1930 Black Coffee (Novelised by Charles Osborne in 1998 as Black Coffee)
- 1943 And Then There Were None (Based on the 1939 novel Ten Little Indians)
- 1944 Murder on the Nile/Hidden Horizon (Based on the 1937 novel Death on the Nile)
- 1945 Appointment with Death (Based on the 1938 novel Appointment with Death)
- 1951 The Hollow (Based on the 1946 novel The Hollow)
- 1952 The Mousetrap (Based on the 1948 short story Three Blind Mice)
- 1953 Witness for the Prosecution (Based on the short story The Witness for the Prosecution)
- 1954 Spider's Web (Novelised by Charles Osborne in 2000 as Spider's Web)
- 1956 A Daughter's a Daughter (Written as a play in the late 1930s. Performed professionally once. Unpublished but turned into the 1952 Mary Westmacott novel A Daughter's a Daughter)
- 1956 Towards Zero (Based on the 1944 novel Towards Zero)
- 1958 Verdict
- 1958 The Unexpected Guest (Novelised by Charles Osborne in 1999 as The Unexpected Guest)
- 1960 Go Back for Murder (Based on the 1942 novel Five Little Pigs)
- 1962 Rule of Three (Comprising Afternoon at the Seaside, The Rats and The Patient)
- 1972 Fiddler's Three (Originally written as Fiddler's Five. Unpublished.)
- 1973 Akhnaton (Written in 1937)
- 2003 Chimneys (Written in 1931, but unperformed for 72 years. Based on the 1925 novel The Secret of Chimneys. Unpublished.)
Radio Plays
- 1937 The Yellow Iris (Based on the short story of the same name)
- 1947 Three Blind Mice (Christie's celebrated stage play The Mousetrap was based on this radio play)
- 1948 Butter in a Lordly Dish
- 1954 Personal Call
Television Plays
- 1937 Wasp's Nest (Based on the short story of the same name)
Nonfiction
Other published works
- 1925 The Road of Dreams (Poetry)
- 1965 Star Over Bethlehem and other stories (Christian stories and poems)
- 1973 Poems
Co-authored works
- 1930 Behind The Screen. A radio serial written together with Hugh Walpole, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, E. C. Bentley and Ronald Knox of the Detection Club. Published in book form in 1983 in The Scoop and Behind The Screen.
- 1931 The Scoop. A radio serial written together with Dorothy L. Sayers, E. C. Bentley, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts and Clemence Dane of the Detection Club. Published in book form in 1983 in The Scoop and Behind The Screen.
- 1931 The Floating Admiral. A book written together with G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers and certain other members of the Detection Club.
- 1956 Towards Zero (A West End theatre dramatisation of her 1944 novel co-written with Gerard Verner)
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