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Agatha Christie

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Agatha Christie <tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">Image:Agatha Christie.jpg
</td></tr>
Born: 15 September 1890
Torquay, Devon, England

<tr><th style="text-align: right;">Died:</th><td>12 January 1976
Cholsey, Oxfordshire, England</td></tr>

Occupation(s): Novelist

<tr><th style="text-align: right;">Genre(s):</th><td>crime fiction</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align: right;">Literary movement:</th><td>Golden Age of Detective Fiction</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align: right;">Influences:</th><td>Edgar Allan Poe Anna Katherine Green Sir Arthur Conan Doyle GK Chesterton</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align: right;">Website:</th><td>www.agathachristie.com</td></tr>

Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, DBE (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), also known as Dame Agatha Christie, was an English crime fiction writer. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but is remembered for her 80 mystery novels. Her work with mystery novels, particularly featuring detectives Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, have given her the title the 'Queen of Crime' and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the mystery novel.

Christie has been called - by the Guinness Book of World Records, among others - the best-selling writer of fiction of all time, and the best-selling writer of any kind second to William Shakespeare. An estimated one billion copies of her novels have been sold in English, and another billion in 103 other languages <ref name=number_of_copies_sold>http://uk.agathachristie.com/site/about_christie/queen_of_crime.php</ref>. As an example of her broad appeal, she is the all-time best-selling author in France, with over 40 million copies sold in French (as of 2003) versus 22 million for Emile Zola, the nearest contender.

Her stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest run ever in London, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre on November 25, 1952, and as of 2006 is still running after more than 20,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and in the same year, Witness for the Prosecution was given an Edgar Award by the MWA, for Best Play. Most of her books and short stories have been filmed, some many times over (Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, 4.50 From Paddington), and most have also been adapted for television and radio.[citation needed]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Image:Agatha Christie plaque -Torre Abbey.jpg Agatha Christie was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in Torquay, Devon, to an American father and a British mother. She never claimed or held United States citizenship.

Her first marriage, an unhappy one, was in 1914 to Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. The couple had one daughter, Rosalind Hicks, and divorced in 1928.

During World War I she worked at a hospital and then a pharmacy, a job that also influenced her work: many of the murders in her books are carried out with poison. (See also cyanide, thallium.)

In December 1926 she disappeared for ten days, causing quite a storm in the press. Her car was found in a chalk pit. She was eventually found staying at a hotel in Harrogate, where she claimed to have suffered amnesia due to a nervous breakdown following the death of her mother and her husband's confessed infidelity. Opinions are still divided as to whether this was a publicity stunt or not. A 1979 film, Agatha, starring Vanessa Redgrave as Christie, recounted a fictionalised version of the disappearance. Other media accounts of this event exist; it was featured on a segment of Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story, for example.

In 1930, Christie married a Roman Catholic (despite her divorce), the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. Mallowan was 14 years younger than Agatha, and her travels with him contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Their marriage was happy in the early years, and endured despite Mallowan's many affairs in later life, notably with Barbara Parker, whom he married in 1977, the year after Agatha's death. Other novels (such as And Then There Were None) were set in and around Torquay, Devon, where she was born. Christie's 1934 novel, Murder on the Orient Express was written in the Pera Palas hotel in Istanbul, Turkey, the southern terminus of the railroad. The hotel maintains Christie's room as a memorial to the author.

Image:AgathaChristie.jpg

In 1971 she was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Agatha Christie died on January 12, 1976, at age 85 from natural causes, at Winterbrook House, Cholsey near Wallingford, Oxfordshire. She is buried at St. Mary's Churchyard in Cholsey, Oxon.

Christie's only child, Rosalind Hicks, died on October 28, 2004, also aged 85, from natural causes. Christie's grandson, Mathew Prichard, now owns the royalties to his grandmother's works.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

At the height of her career, Christie wrote two novels that she intended to be published after her death. They were the last cases of her two great detectives, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple - respectively, Curtain and Sleeping Murder. When she wrote the novels, Christie had not thought she would live so long. Following the success of the film version of Murder on the Orient Express in 1974, Christie authorised the release of Curtain, in which Poirot dies.

In her diary, Christie explained that she had always found him insufferable. She had a great fondness for Miss Marple, on the other hand, who was apparently based on Christie's grandmother. After Miss Marple solves the mystery in Sleeping Murder, she returns home to her regular life in Saint Mary Mead.

Upon seeing the great success of Curtain, Christie gave permission to release Sleeping Murder sometime in 1975, but died in January 1976 before the book could be released. That may explain some of the inconsistencies of the book with the rest of the Marple series - for example, Colonel Arthur Bantry, husband of Miss Marple's friend, Dolly, whose library had the body in it in 1942, is still alive and well in Sleeping Murder (which, like Curtain, was written in the 1940's) despite the fact he is noted as having died, in books that were written after but published before the posthumous release of Sleeping Murder in 1976 — for instance, The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. It may be that Christie simply did not have time to revise the manuscript before she died.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Works

[edit] Novels

[edit] Collections of Short Stories

[edit] Co-authored works

[edit] Plays adapted into novels by Charles Osborne

[edit] Works written as Mary Westmacott

[edit] Plays

[edit] Radio Plays

[edit] Television Plays

[edit] Movie Adaptations

Agatha Christie is no stranger to the cinema. Over the last 78 years, Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, Mr. Quin, Parker Pyne, and many others have been portrayed on numerous occasions:

[edit] Television


Agatha Christie's Poirot television series

Episodes include:

[edit] Video games

Published by Spinnaker Software and Telarium

[edit] Unpublished material

  • Snow Upon the Desert (romantic novel)
  • The Greenshore Folly (detective novella, featuring Hercule Poirot, expanded into the novel Dead man's Folly)
  • Personal Call (supernatural radio play, featuring Inspector Narracott - a recording is in the British National Sound Archive)
  • Butter in a Lordly Dish (horror/detective radio play, adapted from The Woman and the Kenite)
  • The Green Gate (supernatural)
  • The War Bride (romantic/supernatural)
  • The Case of the Dog's Ball (short sory, featuring Poirot, expanded to the novel Dumb Witness and related to the short story How Does your Garden Grow?)
  • The Woman and the Kenite (horror)
  • Stronger than Death (supernatural)
  • Being So Very Wilful (romantic)
  • The Last Seance (stage play)
  • Someone at the Window (detective stage play, adapted from the short story The Dead Harlequin

[edit] Animation

In 2004, the Japanese broadcasting company Nippon Housou Kyoukai turned Poirot and Marple into animated characters in the anime series Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, introducing Mabel West (daughter of Miss Marple's mystery-writer nephew Raymond West, a canonical Christie character) and her duck Oliver as new characters.

[edit] Agatha Christie in fiction

Dame Agatha appears as one of the title characters, with Dorothy L. Sayers, in the fictional murder mystery Dorothy and Agatha by Gaylord Larsen.

The movie Agatha (1979) is about a fictional solution to the real mystery of Agatha Christie's disappearance in 1926.

[edit] Spurious Quotation

Dame Agatha is frequently quoted as saying that an archaeologist is an ideal sort of husband, because the older his wife gets the more interesting he finds her. However, she vehemently denied ever making this remark, saying that she did not find it at all amusing.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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[edit] Further reading

  • Barnard, Robert. A Talent to Deceive - An Appreciation of Agatha Christie. London : Collins, 1980; New York: Mysterious Press, 1987.

[edit] External links

Image:Wikiquote-logo-en.png
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Agatha Christie
Detectives: Hercule Poirot • Miss Marple • Tommy and Tuppence • Ariadne Oliver • Arthur Hastings • Superintendent Battle • Chief Inspector Japp • Parker Pyne
Novels: The Mysterious Affair at Styles • The Secret Adversary • Murder on the Links • The Man in the Brown Suit • The Secret of Chimneys • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd • The Big Four • The Mystery of the Blue Train • The Seven Dials Mystery • The Murder at the Vicarage • The Sittaford Mystery • Peril at End House • Lord Edgware Dies • Murder on the Orient Express • Three Act Tragedy • Why Didn't They Ask Evans? • Death in the Clouds • The A.B.C. Murders • Murder in Mesopotamia • Cards on the Table • Death on the Nile • Dumb Witness • Appointment with Death • And Then There Were None • Murder is Easy • Hercule Poirot's Christmas • Sad Cypress • Evil Under the Sun • N or M? • One, Two, Buckle My Shoe • The Body in the Library • Five Little Pigs • The Moving Finger • Towards Zero • Sparkling Cyanide • Death Comes as the End • The Hollow • Taken at the Flood • Crooked House • A Murder is Announced • They Came to Baghdad • Mrs McGinty's Dead • They Do It with Mirrors • A Pocket Full of Rye • After the Funeral • Hickory Dickory Dock • Destination Unknown • Dead Man's Folly • 4.50 From Paddington • Ordeal by Innocence • Cat Among the Pigeons • The Pale Horse • The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side • The Clocks • A Caribbean Mystery • At Bertram's Hotel • Third Girl • Endless Night • By the Pricking of My Thumbs • Hallowe'en Party • Passenger to Frankfurt • Nemesis • Elephants Can Remember • Postern of Fate • Curtain • Sleeping Murder
As Mary Westmacott: Giant's Bread • Unfinished Portrait • Absent in the Spring • The Rose and the Yew Tree • A Daughter's a Daughter • The Burden
Short story collections: Poirot Investigates • Partners in Crime • The Mysterious Mr. Quin • The Hound of Death • The Thirteen Problems • Parker Pyne Investigates • The Listerdale Mystery • Murder in the Mews • The Regatta Mystery • The Labours of Hercules • Poirot's Early Cases • The Harlequin Tea Set
Plays: Akhnaton • The Mousetrap • Witness for the Prosecution • Verdict • Rule of Three • Fiddlers Three
Persondata
NAME Christie, Agatha Mary
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lady Mallowan
SHORT DESCRIPTION British author
DATE OF BIRTH 15 September 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Torquay, Devon, England
DATE OF DEATH 12 January 1976
PLACE OF DEATH Cholsey, Oxfordshire, England

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