Agatha Christie

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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.
Black and white photo of Agatha Christie as a child. Her hair is in curls and her face is amusingly expressionless. It is unclear what she is wearing, however we believe it is a dress, because of the fabric visible on her shoulder.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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...
Education Fay Weldon
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Madeleine Lucette Ryley
Madeleine (Roberts) Tearle , MLR 's niece, was a West End actress who used the stage name Jane Comfort.
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 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.
Tew, Philip. Zadie Smith. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
112
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...
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...
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...
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...

Timeline

By late 1931: Twelve certain members of the Detection Club...

Women writers item

By late 1931

Twelve certain members of the Detection Club (including Agatha Christie , Dorothy L. Sayers , G. K. Chesterton , Clemence Dane , G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole ) published a collaborative detective novel...

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.
British Book News. British Council.
(1956): 395
Spark, Muriel. Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography. Constable, 1992.
113
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.
Christie, Agatha. Sleeping Murder. Collins; Dodd, Mead, 1976.
Christie, Agatha. The Grand Tour. Editor Prichard, Matthew, HarperCollins, 2012.
Christie, Agatha. The Mousetrap. French, 1954.
Christie, Agatha. The Murder at the Vicarage. Collins; Dodd, Mead, 1930.
Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Collins; Dodd, Mead, 1926.
Christie, Agatha. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. John Lane for Bodley Head, 1920.
Christie, Agatha. The Rose and the Yew Tree. Heinemann, 1948.
Sayers, Dorothy L. et al. “The Scoop: Parts I-XII”. The Listener, Vol.
5
.