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, 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.
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
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...
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...
Textual Features Patricia Wentworth
Though the Feminist Companion says that Miss Silver is a character [i]n the mould of Agatha Christie 's Miss Marple, she actually predates Miss Marple by two years. She is a former governess who now...
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...
Education Fay Weldon
FW learned to read at three: I remember . . . the way the letters suddenly made sense.
Weldon, Fay. Auto da Fay. Flamingo.
24
After her grandmother joined the family in 1942 she was able to borrow adult books from...
Textual Production Michelene Wandor
MW has specialized in adapting and abridging novels for radio. Between 1980 and 2004 she adapted a wide array of fiction by women writers, including works by Jane Austen , Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot
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.
112
Smith, Zadie. “The divine Ms H”. Guardian.co.uk.
Textual Production Dorothy L. Sayers
DLS was an enthusiastic and longstanding member of the Detection Club , a group of detective novelists who met regularly to discuss their craft. DLS helped to establish the club, and served as its President...
Publishing Dorothy L. Sayers
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...
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...
Textual Production Dorothy L. Sayers
Between 1928 and 1934, DLS edited three volumes under the series title Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror. Her introductions to these collections offered a scholarly history of the genre of detective...
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.

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 detectivenovel called...

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.

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.

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 .

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 .

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).

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, 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
.