Agatha Christie Biography and Works.

Dame Agatha Christie was born on September 15, 1890. She was a British crime writer of novels, short stories and plays. She also wrote romances under the name, Mary Westmacott.

Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, Devon, England. While she never received any formal schooling, she did not lack an education. Her father taught her mathematics via story problems, and the family played question-and answer games. Agatha made up stories from a very early age and invented a number of imaginary friends and paracosms.

During the First World War, she worked at a hospital as a nurse. She later worked at a hospital pharmacy, a job that influenced her work, as many of the murders in her books are carried out with poison.

Despite a turbulent courtship, on Christmas Eve 1914, Agatha married Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. The couple had one daughter, Rosalind Hicks. The Christies divorced in 1928. In 1930, Christie married an archaeologist. Their marriage was especially happy in the early years and remained so until Christie’s death in 1976.

Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in 1920 and introduced the long-running character detective, Hercule Poirot appeared in 33 of Christie’s novels and 54 short stories. Her other well known character, Miss Marple, was introduced in The Tuesday Night Club in 1927 (short story) and was based on women like Christie’s grandmother and her cronies.

Christie wrote two novels, Curtain, and Sleeping Murder, intended as the last cases of these two great detectives, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. Both books were sealed in a bank vault for over thirty years and were released for publication by Christie only at the end of her life. These publications came on the heels of the success of the film version of Murder on the Orient Express in 1974.

Agatha Christie was revered as a master of suspense, plotting, and characterization by most of her contemporaries.

Christie has been portrayed on a number of occasions in film and television. Several biographical programs have been made, such as the 2004 BBC television programme entitled Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures, in which she is portrayed by Olivia Williams, Anna Massey, and Bonnie Wright. Christie has also been parodied on screen, such as in the film, Murder by Indecision, which featured the character, “Agatha Crispy”.

In 2004, the Japanese broadcasting company Nippon Hosó Kyokai turned Poirot and Marple into animated characters in the anime series, Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, introducing Mabel West and her duck Oliver as new characters.

Agatha Christie died on January 12, 1976.

Trivia

At one point in her successful career, Agatha Christie actually owned eight different houses. Many of these were used as the houses in many of her novels, such as: Taken at the Flood, Dead Man’s Folly, Five Little Pigs, Crooked House, etc.

Quote

“Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind and your soul is revealed by your actions.