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.
Reviews which DLS
wrote for the Sunday Times during the 1930s allowed her to comment on most of her fellow crime-writers, notably Margery Allingham
and Agatha Christie
. She provided introductions for volumes of short...
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...
Author summary
Patricia Wentworth
PW
began her writing career early in the twentieth century with half a dozen historical novels and romances and went on to achieve great popularity with between sixty and seventy thrillers, mysteries, and detective novels...
Performance of text
Louise Page
LP
's revised adaptation of Agatha Christie
's Philomel Cottage opened at Sonning near Reading, with the title changed from that of Christie's original to that of its previous screen adaptations: Love from a Stranger.
“Louise Page (1955 - )”. doollee.com: The Playwrights Database.
Performance of text
Louise Page
LP
's Agatha Christie
adaptation, then entitled Philomel Cottage (from a Christie short story of 1924 with the same title), first opened in 2004 at Leeds.
“The Fellowship Scheme. Current Fellows. Louise Page”. The Royal Literary Fund.
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...
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
