THRILLER WRITER AGATHA CHRISTIE
BORN 1890 SEPTEMBER 15
GUMNAAM ,ATHE KANGAL WAS HER WRITING
“A mother's love for her child is like
nothing else in the world” –
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English crime novelist,
short story writer and playwright. She also wrote six romances under the name Mary Westmacott including Giant's Bread, but she is best known for the
66 detective novels and
14 short story collections that she wrote under her own name,
most of which revolve around the investigative work of such characters as Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Parker Pyne, Ariadne Oliver, Harley Quin/Mr Satterthwaite and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. She wrote the world's longest-running play, a murder mystery, The Mousetrap.[1] In 1971 she was made a Dame for her contribution to literature.[2]
Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon. She served in a hospital during the First World War before marrying and starting a family in London.
She was initially unsuccessful at getting her work published, but in 1920 The Bodley Head press published her novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring the character of Hercule Poirot. This launched her literary career.
The Guinness Book of World Records lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly 2 billion copies, and her estate claims that her works come third in the rankings of the world's most-widely published books,[3] behind only Shakespeare's works and the Bible.
According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author – having been translated into at least 103 languages.[4] And Then There Were None is Christie's best-selling novel, with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery ever, and one of the best-selling books of all time.[5]
Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run: it opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End on 25 November 1952 and as of 2015 is still running after more than 25,000 performances.[6][7] In 1955 Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's highest honour, the Grand Master Award. Later the same year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award by the MWA for Best Play. In 2013, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 fellow writers of the Crime Writers' Association.[8]
On 15 September 2015, coinciding with Christie's 125th birthday, And Then There Were None was voted as the "World's Favourite Christie", followed closely by Murder on the Orient Express and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.[9] Most of her books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics, and more than thirty feature films have been based on her work
First novels: 1919–23[edit]
Christie had long been a fan of detective novels, having enjoyed Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White and The Moonstone as well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's early Sherlock Holmes stories. She wrote her own detective novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles featuring Hercule Poirot, a former Belgian police officer noted for his twirly large "magnificent moustaches"
and egg-shaped head. Poirot had taken refuge in Britain after Germany had invaded Belgium. Christie's inspiration for this stemmed from real Belgian refugees who were living in Torquay.[10]:75–79
The Styles manuscript was not accepted by such publishing companies as Hodder and Stoughton and Methuen. However, John Lane at The Bodley Head offered to accept it after keeping the submission for several months, provided that Christie change the ending. She did so and then signed a contract which she later felt was exploitative.[10]:79, 81–82 Christie meanwhile settled into married life, giving birth to her only child, daughter Rosalind Margaret in August 1919 at Ashfield, where the couple spent much of their time, having few friends in London.[10]:79 Archie left the Air Force at the end of the war and started working in the City financial sector at a relatively low salary, though they still employed a maid.[10]:80–81
Christie's second novel, The Secret Adversary (1922), featured a new detective couple Tommy and Tuppence, again published by The Bodley Head. It earned her £50. A third novel again featured Poirot, Murder on the Links (1923), as did short stories commissioned by Bruce Ingram, editor of The Sketch magazine.[10]:83 In order to tour the world promoting the British Empire Exhibition, the couple left their daughter Rosalind with Agatha's mother and sister. They travelled to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii.[10]:86–103 [17] They learned to surf prone in South Africa; then, in Waikiki, they were among the first Britons to surf standing up.[1
Disappearance[edit]
In late 1926, Archie asked Agatha for a divorce. He was in love with Nancy Neele, who had been a friend of Major Belcher, director of the British Empire Mission, on the promotional tour a few years earlier.
Her disappearance caused an outcry from the public. The Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, pressured police, and a newspaper offered a £100 reward. Over a thousand police officers, 15,000 volunteers, and several aeroplanes scoured the rural landscape. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even gave a spirit medium one of Christie's gloves to find the missing woman. Dorothy L. Sayers visited the house in Surrey, later using the scenario in her book Unnatural Death.[20]
Christie's disappearance was featured on the front page of The New York Times. Despite the extensive manhunt, she was not found for 10 days.[20][21][22][23] On 14 December 1926,
she was found at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel (now the Old Swan Hotel[a]) in Harrogate, Yorkshire, registered as Mrs Teresa Neele (the surname of her husband's lover) from Cape Town.
Second marriage and later life[edit]
Agatha Christie's room at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, where she wrote Murder on the Orient Express
Blue plaque, 58 Sheffield Terrace, Holland Park, London
In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, having met him during an archaeological dig.
Their marriage was happy and lasted until Christie's death in 1976.[27]
christie frequently used settings that were familiar to her for her stories. Her travels with Mallowan contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Other novels (such as And Then There Were None) were set in and around Torquay, where she was raised. Christie's 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was written in the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul,
Turkey, the southern terminus of the railway. The hotel maintains Christie's room as a memorial to the author.[28] The Greenway Estate in Devon, acquired by the couple as a summer residence in 1938, is now in the care of the National Trust.
Christie often stayed at Abney Hall, Cheshire, owned by her brother-in-law, James Watts, basing at least two stories there: a short story "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding", in the story collection of the same name,
and the novel After the Funeral. "Abney became Agatha's greatest inspiration for country-house life, with all its servants and grandeur being woven into her plots. The descriptions of the fictional Chimneys, Stoneygates, and other houses in her stories are mostly Abney in various forms."[29]
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