Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Agatha Christie
-
Standard Name: Christie, Agatha
Birth Name: Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller
Married Name: Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie
Married Name: Agatha Mary Clarissa Mallowan
Titled: Lady Mallowan
Pseudonym: Mary Westmacott
Pseudonym: Mac Miller
Pseudonym: Nathaniel Miller
Pseudonym: Mostyn Grey
Pseudonym: Martin West
Used Form: Agatha Christie Mallowan
AC
, the Duchess of Death, produced eighty books, including sixty-six novels and detective fictions, and fourteen of short stories as well as poetry and suspense drama. At the height of her career she published two or three books a year; they have been sold and translated in more than a hundred countries, with sale reaching a billion in the original English and another billion in translation.
Lanchester, John. “The Case of Agatha Christie”. London Review of Books, Vol.
40
, No. 24, pp. 3-8.
3
Her work is identified with meticulously constructed plots and ingenious misdirection. UNESCO
reported in August 1961 that she was the world's best-selling author writing in English.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
13
Morgan, Janet. Agatha Christie: A Biography. Collins, http://Rutherford HSS.
216, 326
Her famous sleuths, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, hide their amazing ability beneath an unimpressive exterior.
A review of detective novels in The Times (subtitled Deadlier than the Male) invoked the proud position of women among writers of this genre, citing Dorothy L. Sayers
, Agatha Christie
, Margery Allingham
Publishing
Ngaio Marsh
With this book she moved from Geoffrey Bles, who had published her first seven novels, to Collins
. She felt guilty about this move, but she joined a stable including Agatha Christie
, and...
Literary responses
Ngaio Marsh
At this date NM
's reputation in the United States stood far higher than that of Agatha Christie
.
Lewis, Margaret. Ngaio Marsh: A Life. Chatto & Windus.
111
The Observer reviewed Opening Night as NM
's best work to date.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
52010 (25 May 1951): 8
Literary Setting
Deborah Levy
This novel begins as an Agatha Christie
-style story of people (multi-national rather than English) gathered in a country house (not an English manor but a Normandy chateau) where there is an irruption of violence...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Jenkins
In her day EJ
knew most of the London literary world. She met Agatha Christie
, whom she described as the most elegantly dressed elderly woman I have ever seen.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson.
148
She counted among her...
Textual Features
P. D. James
The result, as Ashby noted, falls somewhere between the cosy settings of Agatha Christie
's Miss Marples novels and the gritty urban dystopias of contemporaries like Ruth Rendell
. PDJ
's imagined worlds tend to...
Reception
Susan Hill
The play's initial success may have been helped by the tradition of spooky shows for Christmas; its durability, however, defies explanation. In December 2018 it had celebrated thirty years, and was still running at the...
Textual Production
Antonia Fraser
AF
again invited comparison with a classic of the detective genre by titling her first collection of short fiction Jemima Shore's First Case and Other Stories.
The title suggests Agatha Christie
's Curtain: Poirot's...
Textual Features
Antonia Fraser
In her detective-story guise, Fraser sees herself as part of a women's tradition in the genre, and names as influences a number of writers who are known for interest in human psychology and a high...
Textual Features
Antonia Fraser
The Dictionary of Literary Biography calls Jemima Shore a new kind of woman detective.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
276
Her independence, intelligence, and literary sensibility are nothing new, but her rejection of marriage and her cheerful sexual promiscuity are...
Reception
Antonia Fraser
Interviewed about this play, AF
said: I don't think I could write the way I do without Agatha Christie
or Patricia Highsmith
.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
His article, Sensation Novelists: Miss Braddon, which covered seven novels she had published since 1862, made a famous personal attack in asserting that her work evidenced familiarity with a very low type of female...
Education
Malorie Blackman
MB
was shaped by her reading outside school. She never entered a bookshop until she was fourteen, but relied on libraries. Early favourites were C. S. Lewis
's Narnia books, Johanna Spyri
's Heidi books...
Textual Features
Phyllis Bentley
PB
's protagonist is an amateur detective, as was standard for the genre at this date. She follows by twenty years on Agatha Christie
's Miss Marple (born in 1930) and precedes by the...
