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, 20 Dec. 2018, 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, 1984, http://Rutherford HSS.
216, 326
Her famous sleuths, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, hide their amazing ability beneath an unimpressive exterior.
FW
learned to read at three: I remember . . . the way the letters suddenly made sense.
Weldon, Fay. Auto da Fay. Flamingo, 2002.
24
After her grandmother joined the family in 1942 she was able to borrow adult books from...
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...
Engle, Sherry D. New Women Dramatists in America, 1890-1920. Palgrave MacMilan, 2007.
92
Tearle began her acting career with the help of her aunt MLR after she...
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.
qtd. in
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson, 2004.
148
She counted among her...
Intertextuality and Influence
Louisa May Alcott
Following her death, G. K. Chesterton
in a laudatory (if sexist) review classed LMA
with Austen
as an early realist, and praised her apt depictions of human truths.
Chesterton, G. K. “Louisa Alcott”. Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott, edited by Madeleine B. Stern, G. K. Hall, 1984, pp. 212-14.
213-14
She was a favourite writer...
Intertextuality and Influence
Josephine Tey
JT
's Miss Pym, an amateur psychologist and best-selling author, can be seen as part of a line of spinster detectives which includes Agatha Christie
's Jane Marple and Patricia Highsmith
's Miss Silver. Miss...
Intertextuality and Influence
Zadie Smith
ZS
was writing stories and poems at five or six, and later moved on to imitations of Agatha Christie
. During her teenage years she was a passionate devotee of the movies.
Smith, Zadie. “The divine Ms H”. Guardian.co.uk, 1 July 2003.
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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...
Literary responses
Charlotte Yonge
The Daisy Chain's popularity was long-lasting, though not so intense as that of The Heir of Redclyffe. Jane Austen
's nephew James Austen-Leigh
compared it to the work of Austen and Scott
...
Literary responses
Mary Wesley
Anita Brookner
's review in the Spectator must have been a blow: she likened Wesley's work to that of Catherine Cookson
and Agatha Christie
, calling it stereotyped, nostalgic, reassuring, romantic, tasteful, well-bred, very slight...
Literary responses
Ngaio Marsh
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
Literary responses
Patricia Wentworth
The dustjacket of this novel bears a list of encomiums on Miss Silver: [t]hat shrewd lady of lavender and Honiton lace (The Star), lovable, indefatigable and undeceivable (Books and Bookmen), [n]ow...
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, 1991.
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 responses
Margery Allingham
The reviewer for Time and Tide was moved by this book to declare MA
the equal of Agatha Christie
in construction and character-drawing; the Sunday Times called it a book for the connoisseur of detective...
Literary responses
Dorothy L. Sayers
A few years after this bookappeared, in 1945, Agatha Christie
expressed disappointment at the way Wimsey's character had developed. He is a good man spoilt, who began as a piquant and surprising caricature but became...
Timeline
By late 1931: Twelve certain members of the Detection Club...
July 1935: An educated, married woman with small children,...
Building item
July 1935
An educated, married woman with small children, living at Ballingate in Ireland, wrote to the magazine Nursery World about her loneliness and depression, seeking suggestions for some affordable occupation.
Hill, Rosemary. “Keep Calm”. London Review of Books, 24 May 2007, pp. 23-4.
23-4
30 July 1935: Penguin Books issued its first ten titles:...
Writing climate item
30 July 1935
Penguin Books
issued its first ten titles: sixpenny paperbacks with a characteristic penguin logo.
Penguin UK: About Us: Company History. http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/aboutus/history.html.
Mezei, Kathy, and Chiara Briganti. “’She must be a very good novelist’: Rereading E. H. Young (1880-1949)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
27
, No. 3, Sept. 2001, pp. 303-31.
308 and n12
Palmer, Alan, and Veronica Palmer. The Chronology of British History. Century, 1992.
380
9 March 1950: Timothy Evans, a van-driver in his early...
Building item
9 March 1950
Timothy Evans
, a van-driver in his early twenties, was hanged for the murders of his wife and baby daughter, who were more likely killed by the family's landlord, John Reginald Halliday Christie
.
“Timonthy Evans and John Christie”. Stephen’s Study Room: British Military & Criminal History in the period 1900 to 1999.
October 1950: A Gallup Poll found that 48 percent of respondents...
Writing climate item
October 1950
A Gallup
Poll found that 48 percent of respondents read detective fiction; among the favourite authors were Edgar Wallace
, Conan Doyle
, and Agatha Christie
.
McAleer, Joseph. Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain 1914-1950. Clarendon Press, 1992.
80-1
1979: US game designer Roberta Williams authored...
Building item
1979
US game designer Roberta Williams
authored and designed the first graphics-based computer game, the hugely successful Mystery House (inspired by Agatha Christie
's And Then There Were None).
Vare, Ethlie Ann, and Greg Ptacek. Patently Female. John Wiley and Sons, 2002.
65
16 April 2007: Novelist Yann Martel began a project of sending...
Writing climate item
16 April 2007
Novelist Yann Martel
began a project of sending a book every two weeks to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
together with an admonitory letter; on a website he recorded the books sent and gave the...
Texts
Christie, Agatha. A Murder is Announced. Collins; Dodd, Mead, 1950.
Christie, Agatha. Absent in the Spring. Collins, 1944.
Christie, Agatha. Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: fifty years of mysteries in the making. Editor Curran, John, b. 1954, HarperCollins, 2009.
Christie, Agatha. An Autobiography. Collins, 1977, http://Rutherford HSS.
Christie, Agatha. Come, Tell Me How You Live. Collins; Dodd, Mead, 1946.
Christie, Agatha. Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. Collins; Dodd, Mead, 1975.
Christie, Agatha. Five Little Pigs. Collins; Dodd, Mead, 1942.
Christie, Agatha. Giant’s Bread. Collins, 1930.
Christie, Agatha. Murder on the Orient Express. Collins; Dodd, Mead, 1934.