Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Born | Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller 15 September 1890 Torquay, Devon, England |
Died | 12 January 1976 Winterbrook House, Winterbrook, Oxfordshire, England | (aged 85)
Resting place | Church of St Mary, Cholsey, Oxfordshire, England |
Pen name | Mary Westmacott |
Occupation | Novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, memoirist |
Genre | Murder mystery, detective story, crime fiction, thriller |
Literary movement | Golden Age of Detective Fiction |
Notable works | |
Spouses | |
Relatives | James Watts (nephew) |
Signature | |
![]() | |
Website | |
The Home of Agatha Christie |
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her sixty-six detective novels and fourteen short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which was performed in the West End from 1952 to 2020, as well as six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed in 1920 when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring detective Hercule Poirot, was published. Her first husband was Archibald Christie; they married in 1914 and had one child before divorcing in 1928. During both World Wars, she served in hospital dispensaries, acquiring a thorough knowledge of the poisons which featured in many of her novels, short stories, and plays. Following her marriage to archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930, she spent several months each year on digs in the Middle East and used her first-hand knowledge of his profession in her fiction.
According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author. And Then There Were None is one of the highest selling books of all time, with approximately 100 million sales. Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for the longest initial run. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End of London on 25 November 1952, and by September 2018 there had been more than 27,500 performances. The play was closed down in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. Later that year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award for best play. In 2013, she was voted the best crime writer and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the best crime novel ever by 600 professional novelists of the Crime Writers' Association. In September 2015, And Then There Were None was named the "World's Favourite Christie" in a vote sponsored by the author's estate. Most of Christie's books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games, and graphic novels. More than thirty feature films are based on her work.
Life and career
Childhood and adolescence: 1890–1907
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15 September 1890 into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon. She was the youngest of three children born to Frederick Alvah ("Fred") Miller, "a gentleman of substance",[1] and his wife Clarissa Margaret ("Clara") Miller née Boehmer.[2]: 1–4 [3][4][5]
Christie's mother Clara was born in Dublin in 1854[a] to British Army officer Frederick Boehmer[8] and his wife Mary Ann Boehmer née West. Boehmer died in Jersey in 1863,[b] leaving his widow to raise Clara and her brothers on a meagre income.[9][12]: 10 Two weeks after Boehmer's death, Mary's sister Margaret West married widowed dry goods merchant Nathaniel Frary Miller, a US citizen.[13] To assist Mary financially, they agreed to foster nine-year-old Clara; the family settled in Timperley, Cheshire.[14] Margaret and Nathaniel had no children together, but Nathaniel had a seventeen-year-old son, Fred Miller, from his previous marriage. Fred was born in New York City and travelled extensively after leaving his Swiss boarding school.[12]: 12 He and Clara were married in London in 1878.[2]: 2–5 [3] Their first child, Margaret Frary ("Madge"), was born in Torquay in 1879.[2]: 6 [15] The second, Louis Montant ("Monty"), was born in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1880,[16] while the family was on an extended visit to the United States.[10]: 7
When Fred's father died in 1869,[17] he left Clara £2,000 (approximately equivalent to £230,000 in 2023); in 1881 they used this to buy the leasehold of a villa in Torquay named Ashfield.[18][19] It was here that their third and last child, Agatha, was born in 1890.[2]: 6–7 [5] She described her childhood as "very happy".[10]: 3 The Millers lived mainly in Devon but often visited her step-grandmother/great-aunt Margaret Miller in Ealing and maternal grandmother Mary Boehmer in Bayswater.[10]: 26–31 A year was spent abroad with her family, in the French Pyrenees, Paris, Dinard, and Guernsey.[2]: 15, 24–25 Because her siblings were so much older, and there were few children in their neighbourhood, Christie spent much of her time playing alone with her pets and imaginary companions.[10]: 9–10, 86–88 She eventually made friends with other girls in Torquay, noting that "one of the highlights of my existence" was her appearance with them in a youth production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard, in which she played the hero, Colonel Fairfax.[2]: 23–27
![Black-and-white portrait photograph of Christie as a girl](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Agatha_Christie_as_a_child_No_1.jpg/220px-Agatha_Christie_as_a_child_No_1.jpg)
According to Christie, Clara believed she should not learn to read until she was eight; thanks to her curiosity, she was reading by age four.[10]: 13 Her sister had been sent to a boarding school, but their mother insisted that Christie receive a home education. As a result, her parents and sister supervised her studies in reading, writing, and basic arithmetic, a subject she particularly enjoyed. They also taught her music, and she learned to play the piano and the mandolin.[2]: 8, 20–21
Christie was a voracious reader from an early age. Among her earliest memories were reading children's books by Mrs Molesworth and Edith Nesbit. When a little older, she moved on to the surreal verse of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll.[2]: 18–19 As an adolescent, she enjoyed works by Anthony Hope, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, and Alexandre Dumas.[10]: 111, 136–137 In April 1901, aged 10, she wrote her first poem, "The Cowslip".[20]
By 1901, her father's health had deteriorated, because of what he believed were heart problems.[12]: 33 Fred died in November 1901 from pneumonia and chronic kidney disease.[21] Christie later said that her father's death when she was eleven marked the end of her childhood.[2]: 32–33
The family's financial situation had by this time worsened. Madge married the year after their father's death and moved to Cheadle, Cheshire; Monty was overseas, serving in a British regiment.[12]: 43, 49 Christie now lived alone at Ashfield with her mother. In 1902, she began attending Miss Guyer's Girls' School in Torquay but found it difficult to adjust to the disciplined atmosphere.[10]: 139 In 1905, her mother sent her to Paris, where she was educated in a series of pensionnats (boarding schools), focusing on voice training and piano playing. Deciding she lacked the temperament and talent, she gave up her goal of performing professionally as a concert pianist or an opera singer.[12]: 59–61
Early literary attempts, marriage, literary success: 1907–1926
After completing her education, Christie returned to England to find her mother ailing. They decided to spend the northern winter of 1907–1908 in the warm climate of Egypt, which was then a regular tourist destination for wealthy Britons.[10]: 155–157 They stayed for three months at the Gezirah Palace Hotel in Cairo. Christie attended many dances and other social functions; she particularly enjoyed watching amateur polo matches. While they visited some ancient Egyptian monuments such as the Great Pyramid of Giza, she did not exhibit the great interest in archaeology and Egyptology that developed in her later years.[2]: 40–41 Returning to Britain, she continued her social activities, writing and performing in amateur theatricals. She also helped put on a play called The Blue Beard of Unhappiness with female friends.[2]: 45–47
At eighteen, Christie wrote her first short story, "The House of Beauty", while recovering in bed from an illness. It consisted of about 6,000 words on "madness and dreams", a subject of fascination for her. Her biographer, Janet Morgan, has commented that, despite "infelicities of style", the story was "compelling".[2]: 48–49 (The story became an early version of her story "The House of Dreams".)[22] Other stories followed, most of them illustrating her interest in spiritualism and the paranormal. These included "The Call of Wings" and "The Little Lonely God". Magazines rejected all her early submissions, made under pseudonyms (including Mac Miller, Nathaniel Miller, and Sydney West); some submissions were later revised and published under her real name, often with new titles.[2]: 49–50
Around the same time, Christie began work on her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert. Writing under the pseudonym Monosyllaba, she set the book in Cairo and drew upon her recent experiences there. She was disappointed when the six publishers she contacted declined the work.[2]: 50–51 [23] Clara suggested that her daughter ask for advice from the successful novelist Eden Phillpotts, a family friend and neighbour, who responded to her enquiry, encouraged her writing, and sent her an introduction to his own literary agent, Hughes Massie, who also rejected Snow Upon the Desert but suggested a second novel.[2]: 51–52
Meanwhile, Christie's social activities expanded, with country house parties, horseback riding, hunting, dances, and roller skating.[10]: 165–166 She had short-lived relationships with four men and an engagement to another.[12]: 64–67 In October 1912, she was introduced to Archibald "Archie" Christie at a dance given by Lord and Lady Clifford at Ugbrooke, about 12 miles (19 kilometres) from Torquay. The son of a barrister in the Indian Civil Service, Archie was an army officer who was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps in April 1913. The couple quickly fell in love. Three months after their first meeting, Archie proposed marriage, and Agatha accepted.[2]: 54–63
With the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Archie was sent to France to fight. They married on Christmas Eve 1914 at Emmanuel Church, Clifton, Bristol, close to the home of his mother and stepfather, while Archie was on home leave.[24][25] Rising through the ranks, he was posted back to Britain in September 1918 as a colonel in the Air Ministry. Christie involved herself in the war effort as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross. From October 1914 to May 1915, then from June 1916 to September 1918, she worked 3,400 hours in the Town Hall Red Cross Hospital, Torquay, first as a nurse (unpaid) then as a dispenser at £16 (approximately equivalent to £1,130 in 2023) a year from 1917) after qualifying as an apothecaries' assistant.[2]: 69 [26] Her war service ended in September 1918 when Archie was reassigned to London, and they rented a flat in St. John's Wood.[2]: 73–74
Christie had long been a fan of detective novels, having enjoyed Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and The Moonstone, and Arthur Conan Doyle's early Sherlock Holmes stories. She wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1916. It featured Hercule Poirot, a former Belgian police officer with "magnificent moustaches" and a head "exactly the shape of an egg",[27]: 13 who had taken refuge in Britain after Germany invaded Belgium. Christie's inspiration for the character came from Belgian refugees living in Torquay, and the Belgian soldiers she helped to treat as a volunteer nurse during the First World War.[2]: 75–79 [28]: 17–18 Her original manuscript was rejected by Hodder & Stoughton and Methuen. After keeping the submission for several months, John Lane at The Bodley Head offered to accept it, provided that Christie change how the solution was revealed. She did so, and signed a contract committing her next five books to The Bodley Head, which she later felt was exploitative.[2]: 79, 81–82 It was published in 1920.[20]
![Black-and-white photograph of three men in suits and one woman seated in a room and looking at an open newspaper](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/British_Empire_Tour_1922_Belcher.jpg/220px-British_Empire_Tour_1922_Belcher.jpg)
Christie settled into married life, giving birth to her only child, Rosalind Margaret Clarissa, in August 1919 at Ashfield.[2]: 79 [12]: 340, 349, 422 Archie left the Air Force at the end of the war and began working in the City financial sector at a relatively low salary. They still employed a maid.[2]: 80–81 Her second novel, The Secret Adversary (1922), featured a new detective couple Tommy and Tuppence, again published by The Bodley Head. It earned her £50 (approximately equivalent to £3,400 in 2023). A third novel, Murder on the Links, again featured Poirot, as did the short stories commissioned by Bruce Ingram, editor of The Sketch magazine, from 1923.[2]: 83 She now had no difficulty selling her work.[27]: 33
In 1922, the Christies joined an around-the-world promotional tour for the British Empire Exhibition, led by Major Ernest Belcher. Leaving their daughter with Agatha's mother and sister, in ten months they travelled to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Canada.[2]: 86–103 [29] They learned to surf prone in South Africa; then, in Waikiki, they were among the first Britons to surf standing up.[30][31]
When they returned to England, Archie resumed work in the City, and Christie continued to work hard at her writing. After living in a series of apartments in London, they bought a house in Sunningdale, Berkshire, which they renamed Styles after the mansion in Christie's first detective novel.[2]: 124–125 [12]: 154–155
Christie's mother died in April 1926. They had been exceptionally close, and the loss sent Christie into a deep depression.[12]: 168–172 In August 1926, reports appeared in the press that Christie had gone to a village near Biarritz to recuperate from a "breakdown" caused by "overwork".[32]
Disappearance: 1926
![Newspaper article with portraits of Agatha and Archie Christie](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Christie_at_Hydro.jpg/220px-Christie_at_Hydro.jpg)
In August 1926, Archie asked Christie for a divorce. He had fallen in love with Nancy Neele, a friend of Major Belcher.[12]: 173–174 On 3 December 1926, the pair quarrelled after Archie announced his plan to spend the weekend with friends, unaccompanied by his wife. Late that evening, Christie disappeared from their home. The following morning, her car, a Morris Cowley, was discovered at Newlands Corner, parked above a chalk quarry with an expired driving licence and clothes inside.[33][2]: 135 [34]
The disappearance quickly became a news story, as the press sought to satisfy their readers' "hunger for sensation, disaster, and scandal".[12]: 224 Home secretary William Joynson-Hicks pressured police, and a newspaper offered a £100 reward (approximately equivalent to £8,000 in 2023). More than a thousand police officers, 15,000 volunteers, and several aeroplanes searched the rural landscape. Conan Doyle gave a spirit medium one of Christie's gloves to find her.[c] Christie's disappearance was featured on the front page of The New York Times. Despite the extensive manhunt, she was not found for another ten days.[36][35][37] On 14 December 1926, she was located at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel[38] in Harrogate, Yorkshire, registered as Mrs Tressa[d] Neele (the surname of her husband's lover) from "Capetown [sic] S.A." (South Africa). The next day, Christie left for her sister's residence at Abney Hall, Cheadle, where she was sequestered "in guarded hall, gates locked, telephone cut off, and callers turned away".[39][2]: 146 [12]: 196 [40][41][42]
Christie's autobiography makes no reference to the disappearance.[10] Two doctors diagnosed her as suffering from "an unquestionable genuine loss of memory",[42][43] yet opinion remains divided over the reason for her disappearance. Some, including her biographer Morgan, believe she disappeared during a fugue state.[2]: 154–159 [35][44] The author Jared Cade concluded that Christie planned the event to embarrass her husband but did not anticipate the resulting public melodrama.[45]: 121 Christie biographer Laura Thompson provides an alternative view that Christie disappeared during a nervous breakdown, conscious of her actions but not in emotional control of herself.[12]: 220–221 Public reaction at the time was largely negative, supposing a publicity stunt or an attempt to frame her husband for murder.[46][e]
Second marriage and later life: 1927–1976
![Colour photograph of a hotel room with Christie memorabilia on the walls](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Hotel_Pera_Palace_-_Istanbul.jpg/220px-Hotel_Pera_Palace_-_Istanbul.jpg)
In January 1927, Christie, looking "very pale", sailed with her daughter and secretary to Las Palmas, Canary Islands, to "complete her convalescence",[47] returning three months later.[48][f] Christie petitioned for divorce and was granted a decree nisi against her husband in April 1928, which was made absolute in October 1928. Archie married Nancy Neele a week later.[49] Christie retained custody of their daughter, Rosalind, and kept the Christie surname for her writing.[50][28]: 21
Reflecting on the period in her autobiography, Christie wrote, "So, after illness, came sorrow, despair and heartbreak. There is no need to dwell on it."[10]: 340
In 1928 Christie left England and took the (Simplon) Orient Express to Istanbul and then to Baghdad.[2]: 169–170 In Iraq, she became friends with archaeologist Leonard Woolley and his wife, who invited her to return to their dig in February 1930.[10]: 376–377 On that second trip, she met an archaeologist, thirteen years her junior, Max Mallowan.[12]: 284 In a 1977 interview, Mallowan recounted his first meeting with Christie, when he took her and a group of tourists on a tour of his expedition site in Iraq.[51] Christie and Mallowan married in Edinburgh in September 1930.[12]: 295–296 [52] Their marriage lasted until Christie's death in 1976.[12]: 413–414 She accompanied Mallowan on his archaeological expeditions, and her travels with him contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East.[51] Other novels (such as Peril At End House) were set in and around Torquay, where she was raised.[27]: 95 Christie drew on her experience of international train travel when writing her 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express.[2]: 201 The Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, the southern terminus of the railway, claims the book was written there and maintains Christie's room as a memorial to the author.[53][g]
![Colour photograph of the front of a three-storey house](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Cresswell_Place.jpg/170px-Cresswell_Place.jpg)
Christie and Mallowan lived in Chelsea, first in Cresswell Place and later in Sheffield Terrace. Both properties are now marked by blue plaques. In 1934, they bought Winterbrook House in Winterbrook, a hamlet near Wallingford.[54] This was their main residence for the rest of their lives and the place where Christie did much of her writing.[12]: 365 This house also bears a blue plaque. Christie led a quiet life despite being known in Wallingford; from 1951 to 1976 she served as president of the local amateur dramatic society.[55]
![Colour photograph of a wall plaque stating Christie "lived here 1934–1941"](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Agatha_Christie_58_Sheffield_Terrace_blue_plaque.jpg/220px-Agatha_Christie_58_Sheffield_Terrace_blue_plaque.jpg)
The couple acquired the Greenway Estate in Devon as a summer residence in 1938,[12]: 310 which was given to the National Trust in 2000.[56] Christie frequently stayed at Abney Hall, Cheshire, which was owned by her brother-in-law, James Watts, and based at least two stories there: a short story "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" in the story collection of the same name and the novel After the Funeral.[10]: 126 [12]: 43 One Christie compendium notes that "Abney became Agatha's greatest inspiration for country-house life, with all its servants and grandeur being woven into her plots. The descriptions of the fictional Chimneys, Stonygates, and other houses in her stories are mostly Abney Hall in various forms."[57]
During the Second World War, Christie worked in the pharmacy at University College Hospital (UCH), London, where she updated her knowledge of poisons. Her later novel The Pale Horse was based on a suggestion from Harold Davis, the chief pharmacist at UCH. In 1977, a thallium poisoning case was solved by British medical personnel who had read Christie's book and recognised the symptoms she described.[58][59]
The British intelligence agency MI5 investigated Christie after a character called Major Bletchley appeared in her 1941 thriller N or M?, which was about a hunt for a pair of deadly fifth columnists in wartime England.[60] MI5 was concerned that Christie had a spy in Britain's top-secret codebreaking centre, Bletchley Park. The agency's fears were allayed when Christie told her friend, the codebreaker Dilly Knox, "I was stuck there on my way by train from Oxford to London and took revenge by giving the name to one of my least lovable characters."[60]
Christie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1950.[28]: 23 In honour of her many literary works, Christie was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1956 New Year Honours.[61] She was co-president of the Detection Club from 1958 to her death in 1976.[27]: 93 In 1961, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature degree by the University of Exeter.[28]: 23 In the 1971 New Year Honours, she was promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE),[62][63][64] three years after her husband had been knighted for his archaeological work.[65] After her husband's knighthood, Christie could also be styled Lady Mallowan.[27]: 343
From 1971 to 1974, Christie's health began to fail, but she continued to write. Her last novel was Postern of Fate in 1973.[2]: 368–372 [12]: 477 Using textual analysis, Canadian researchers suggested in 2009 that Christie may have begun to suffer from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia.[66][67]
Personal qualities
![Black-and-white portrait photograph of Christie in later life](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Agatha_Christie_in_Nederland_%28detectiveschrijfster%29%2C_bij_aankomst_op_Schiphol_me%2C_Bestanddeelnr_916-8898_%28cropped%29.jpg/170px-Agatha_Christie_in_Nederland_%28detectiveschrijfster%29%2C_bij_aankomst_op_Schiphol_me%2C_Bestanddeelnr_916-8898_%28cropped%29.jpg)
In 1946, Christie said of herself: "My chief dislikes are crowds, loud noises, gramophones and cinemas. I dislike the taste of alcohol and do not like smoking. I do like sun, sea, flowers, travelling, strange foods, sports, concerts, theatres, pianos, and doing embroidery."[68]
Christie's works of fiction contain some objectionable character stereotypes, but in real life, many of her biases were positive. After four years of war-torn London, Christie hoped to return some day to Syria, which she described as a "gentle fertile country and its simple people, who know how to laugh and how to enjoy life; who are idle and gay, and who have dignity, good manners, and a great sense of humour, and to whom death is not terrible".[69]: 167
Christie was a lifelong, "quietly devout"[2]: 183 member of the Church of England, attended church regularly, and kept her mother's copy of The Imitation of Christ by her bedside.[12]: 30, 290 After her divorce, she stopped taking the sacrament of communion.[12]: 263
The Agatha Christie Trust For Children was established in 1969,[70] and shortly after Christie's death a charitable memorial fund was set up to "help two causes that she favoured: old people and young children".[71]
Christie's obituary in The Times notes that "she never cared much for the cinema, or for wireless and television". Further,
Dame Agatha's private pleasures were gardening – she won local prizes for horticulture – and buying furniture for her various houses. She was a shy person: she disliked public appearances: but she was friendly and sharp-witted to meet. By inclination as well as breeding she belonged to the English upper middle-class. She wrote about, and for, people like herself. That was an essential part of her charm.[1]
Death and estate
![Colour photograph of a sandstone headstone](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Agatha_christie%27s_grave.jpg/170px-Agatha_christie%27s_grave.jpg)
![Colour photograph of the front of a three-storey house](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Winterbrook_House-geograph-1848557-by-Bill-Nicholls.jpg/220px-Winterbrook_House-geograph-1848557-by-Bill-Nicholls.jpg)
Death and burial
Christie died peacefully on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at home at Winterbrook House.[72][73] When her death was announced, two West End theatres – the St. Martin's, where The Mousetrap was playing, and the Savoy, which was home to a revival of Murder at the Vicarage – dimmed their outside lights in her honour.[27]: 373 She was buried in the nearby churchyard of St Mary's, Cholsey, in a plot she had chosen with her husband ten years before. The simple funeral service was attended by about 20 newspaper and TV reporters, some having travelled from as far away as South America. Thirty wreaths adorned Christie's grave, including one from the cast of her long-running play The Mousetrap and one sent "on behalf of the multitude of grateful readers" by the Ulverscroft Large Print Book Publishers.[74]
Mallowan, who remarried in 1977, died in 1978 and was buried next to Christie.[75]
Estate and subsequent ownership of works
Christie was unhappy about becoming "an employed wage slave",[12]: 428 and for tax reasons set up a private company in 1955, Agatha Christie Limited, to hold the rights to her works. In about 1959 she transferred her 278-acre home, Greenway Estate, to her daughter Rosalind (married name Hicks).[76][77] In 1968, when Christie was almost 80, she sold a 51% stake in Agatha Christie Limited (and the works it owned) to Booker Books (better known as Booker Author's Division), which by 1977 had increased its stake to 64%.[2]: 355 [78] Agatha Christie Limited still owns the worldwide rights for more than eighty of Christie's novels and short stories, nineteen plays, and nearly forty TV films.[79]
In the late 1950s, Christie had reputedly been earning around £100,000 (approximately equivalent to £3,000,000 in 2023) per year. As a result of her tax planning, her will left only £106,683 (approximately equivalent to £970,000 in 2023) net, which went mostly to her husband and daughter along with some smaller bequests.[72][80] Her remaining 36% share of Agatha Christie Limited was inherited by Hicks who passionately preserved her mother's works, image, and legacy until her own death 28 years later.[76] The family's share of the company allowed them to appoint 50% of the board and the chairman, and retain a veto over new treatments, updated versions, and republications of her works.[76][81]
In 2004, Hicks' obituary in The Telegraph noted that she had been "determined to remain true to her mother's vision and to protect the integrity of her creations" and disapproved of "merchandising" activities.[76] Upon her death on 28 October 2004, the Greenway Estate passed to her son Mathew Prichard. After his stepfather's death in 2005, Prichard donated Greenway and its contents to the National Trust.[76][82]
Christie's family and family trusts, including great-grandson James Prichard, continue to own the 36% stake in Agatha Christie Limited,[79] and remain associated with the company. In 2020, James Prichard was the company's chairman.[83] Mathew Prichard also holds the copyright to some of his grandmother's later literary works including The Mousetrap.[12]: 427 Christie's work continues to be developed in a range of adaptations.[84]
In 1998, Booker sold its shares in Agatha Christie Limited (at the time earning £2,100,000, approximately equivalent to £4,700,000 in 2023 annual revenue) for £10,000,000 (approximately equivalent to £22,200,000 in 2023) to Chorion, whose portfolio of authors' works included the literary estates of Enid Blyton and Dennis Wheatley.[81] In February 2012, after a management buyout, Chorion began to sell off its literary assets.[79] This included the sale of Chorion's 64% stake in Agatha Christie Limited to Acorn Media UK.[85] In 2014, RLJ Entertainment Inc. (RJLE) acquired Acorn Media UK, renamed it Acorn Media Enterprises, and incorporated it as the RLJE UK development arm.[86]
In late February 2014, media reports stated that the BBC had acquired exclusive TV rights to Christie's works in the UK (previously associated with ITV) and made plans with Acorn's co-operation to air new productions for the 125th anniversary of Christie's birth in 2015.[87] As part of that deal, the BBC broadcast Partners in Crime[88] and And Then There Were None,[89] both in 2015.[90] Subsequent productions have included The Witness for the Prosecution[91] but plans to televise Ordeal by Innocence at Christmas 2017 were delayed because of controversy surrounding one of the cast members.[92] The three-part adaptation aired in April 2018.[93] A three-part adaptation of The A.B.C. Murders starring John Malkovich and Rupert Grint began filming in June 2018 and was first broadcast in December 2018.[94][95]
Works, reception, and legacy
Works of fiction
![Drawing of a gentleman in a dinner suit twirling his large moustache, illustrating the Christie story "13 for Dinner"](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/American-13-for-Dinner.jpg/220px-American-13-for-Dinner.jpg)
Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple
Christie's first published book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was released in 1920 and introduced the detective Hercule Poirot, who appeared in thirty-three of her novels and more than fifty short stories.[28][96]
Over the years, Christie grew tired of Poirot, much as Conan Doyle did with Sherlock Holmes.[2]: 230 By the end of the 1930s, Christie wrote in her diary that she was finding Poirot "insufferable", and by the 1960s she felt he was "an egocentric creep".[97] Thompson believes Christie's occasional antipathy to her creation is overstated, and points out that "in later life she sought to protect him against misrepresentation as powerfully as if he were her own flesh and blood".[12]: 282 Unlike Conan Doyle, she resisted the temptation to kill her detective off while he was still popular.[2]: 222 She married off Poirot's "Watson", Captain Arthur Hastings, in an attempt to trim her cast commitments.[10]: 268
Miss Jane Marple was introduced in a series of short stories that began publication in December 1927 and were subsequently collected under the title The Thirteen Problems.[12]: 278 Marple was a genteel, elderly spinster who solved crimes using analogies to English village life.[27]: 47, 74–76 Christie said, "Miss Marple was not in any way a picture of my grandmother; she was far more fussy and spinsterish than my grandmother ever was", but her autobiography establishes a firm connection between the fictional character and Christie's step-grandmother Margaret Miller ("Auntie-Grannie")[h] and her "Ealing cronies".[10]: 422–423 [98] Both Marple and Miller "always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and were, with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right".[10]: 422 Marple appeared in twelve novels and twenty stories.
During the Second World War, Christie wrote two novels, Curtain and Sleeping Murder, featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, respectively. Both books were sealed in a bank vault, and she made over the copyrights by deed of gift to her daughter and her husband to provide each with a kind of insurance policy.[12]: 344 [27]: 190 Christie suffered a heart attack and a serious fall in 1974, after which she was unable to write.[2]: 372 Her daughter authorised the publication of Curtain in 1975,[2]: 375 and Sleeping Murder was published posthumously in 1976.[27]: 376 These publications followed the success of the 1974 film version of Murder on the Orient Express.[10]: 497 [99]
Shortly before the publication of Curtain, Poirot became the first fictional character to have an obituary in The New York Times, which was printed on page one on 6 August 1975.[100]
Christie never wrote a novel or short story featuring both Poirot and Miss Marple.[27]: 375 In a recording discovered and released in 2008, Christie revealed the reason for this: "Hercule Poirot, a complete egoist, would not like being taught his business or having suggestions made to him by an elderly spinster lady. Hercule Poirot – a professional sleuth – would not be at home at all in Miss Marple's world."[98]
In 2013, the Christie family supported the release of a new Poirot story, The Monogram Murders, written by British author Sophie Hannah.[101] Hannah later published two more Poirot mysteries, Closed Casket in 2016 and The Mystery of Three Quarters in 2018.[102][103]
Formula and plot devices
Christie has been called the "Duchess of Death", the "Mistress of Mystery", and the "Queen of Crime".[28]: 15 Early in her career, a reporter noted that "her plots are possible, logical, and always new".[32] According to Hannah, "At the start of each novel, she shows us an apparently impossible situation and we go mad wondering 'How can this be happening?' Then, slowly, she reveals how the impossible is not only possible but the only thing that could have happened."[102]
![Colour photograph of a large country house in parkland](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/South_face_of_Abney_Hall%2C_looking_north_%28Cheadle%2C_Manchester_-_20_May_2007%29.jpg/220px-South_face_of_Abney_Hall%2C_looking_north_%28Cheadle%2C_Manchester_-_20_May_2007%29.jpg)
She developed her storytelling techniques during what has been called the "Golden Age" of detective fiction.[104] Author Dilys Winn called Christie "the doyenne of Coziness", a sub-genre which "featured a small village setting, a hero with faintly aristocratic family connections, a plethora of red herrings and a tendency to commit homicide with sterling silver letter openers and poisons imported from Paraguay".[105] At the end, in a Christie hallmark, the detective usually gathers the surviving suspects into one room, explains the course of their deductive reasoning, and reveals the guilty party; there are exceptions where it is left to the guilty party to explain all (such as And Then There Were None and Endless Night).[106][107]
Christie did not limit herself to quaint English villages – the action might take place on a small island (And Then There Were None), an aeroplane (Death in the Clouds), a train (Murder on the Orient Express), a steamship (Death on the Nile), a smart London flat (Cards on the Table), a resort in the West Indies (A Caribbean Mystery), or an archaeological dig (Murder in Mesopotamia) – but the circle of potential suspects is usually closed and intimate: family members, friends, servants, business associates, fellow travellers.[108]: 37 Stereotyped characters abound (the femme fatale, the stolid policeman, the devoted servant, the dull colonel), but these may be subverted to stymie the reader; impersonations and secret alliances are always possible.[108]: 58 There is always a motive – most often, money: "There are very few killers in Christie who enjoy murder for its own sake."[12]: 379, 396
Professor of Pharmacology Michael C. Gerald noted that "in over half her novels, one or more victims are poisoned, albeit not always to the full satisfaction of the perpetrator".[109]: viii Guns, knives, garrottes, tripwires, blunt instruments, and even a hatchet were also used, but "Christie never resorted to elaborate mechanical or scientific means to explain her ingenuity",[110]: 57 according to John Curran, author and literary adviser to the Christie estate.[111] Many of her clues are mundane objects: a calendar, a coffee cup, wax flowers, a beer bottle, a fireplace used during a heat wave.[108]: 38
According to crime writer P. D. James, Christie was prone to making the unlikeliest character the guilty party. Alert readers could sometimes identify the culprit by identifying the least likely suspect.[112] Christie mocked this insight in her Foreword to Cards on the Table: "Spot the person least likely to have committed the crime and in nine times out of ten your task is finished. Since I do not want my faithful readers to fling away this book in disgust, I prefer to warn them beforehand that this is not that kind of book".[113]: 135–136
On Desert Island Discs in 2007, Brian Aldiss said Christie had told him she wrote her books up to the last chapter, then decided who the most unlikely suspect was, after which she would go back and make the necessary changes to "frame" that person.[114] Based upon a study of her working notebooks, Curran describes how Christie would first create a cast of characters, choose a setting, and then produce a list of scenes in which specific clues would be revealed; the order of scenes would be revised as she developed her plot. Of necessity, the murderer had to be known to the author before the sequence could be finalised and she began to type or dictate the first draft of her novel.[108] Much of the work, particularly dialogue, was done in her head before she put it on paper.[10]: 241–245 [113]: 33
In 2013, the 600 members of the Crime Writers' Association chose The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as "the best whodunit novel ever written".[115] Author Julian Symons observed, "In an obvious sense, the book fits within the conventions ... The setting is a village deep within the English countryside, Roger Ackroyd dies in his study; there is a butler who behaves suspiciously ... Every successful detective story in this period involved a deceit practised upon the reader, and here the trick is the highly original one of making the murderer the local doctor, who tells the story and acts as Poirot's Watson."[104]: 106–107 Critic Sutherland Scott stated, "If Agatha Christie had made no other contribution to the literature of detective fiction she would still deserve our grateful thanks" for writing this novel.[116]
In September 2015, to mark her 125th birthday, And Then There Were None was named the "World's Favourite Christie" in a vote sponsored by the author's estate.[117] The novel is emblematic of both her use of formula and her willingness to discard it. "And Then There Were None carries the 'closed society' type of murder mystery to extreme lengths," according to author Charles Osborne.[27]: 170 It begins with the classic set-up of potential victim(s) and killer(s) isolated from the outside world, but then violates conventions. There is no detective involved in the action, no interviews of suspects, no careful search for clues, and no suspects gathered together in the last chapter to be confronted with the solution. As Christie herself said, "Ten people had to die without it becoming ridiculous or the murderer being obvious".[10]: 457 Critics agreed she had succeeded: "The arrogant Mrs. Christie this time set herself a fearsome test of her own ingenuity ... the reviews, not surprisingly, were without exception wildly adulatory."[27]: 170–171
Character stereotypes and perceived racism
Christie included stereotyped descriptions of characters in her work, especially before 1945 (when such attitudes were more commonly expressed publicly), particularly in regard to Italians, Jews, and non-Europeans.[2]: 264–266 For example, she described "men of Hebraic extraction, sallow men with hooked noses, wearing rather flamboyant jewellery" in the short story "The Soul of the Croupier" from the collection The Mysterious Mr Quin. In 1947, the Anti-Defamation League in the US sent an official letter of complaint to Christie's American publishers, Dodd, Mead and Company, regarding perceived antisemitism in her works. Christie's British literary agent later wrote to her US representative, authorising American publishers to "omit the word 'Jew' when it refers to an unpleasant character in future books".[12]: 386
In The Hollow, published in 1946, one of the characters is "a Whitechapel Jewess with dyed hair and a voice like a corncrake ... a small woman with a thick nose, henna red and a disagreeable voice". To contrast with the more stereotyped descriptions, Christie portrayed some "foreign" characters as victims, or potential victims, at the hands of English malefactors, such as, respectively, Olga Seminoff (Hallowe'en Party) and Katrina Reiger (in the short story "How Does Your Garden Grow?"). Jewish characters are often seen as un-English (such as Oliver Manders in Three Act Tragedy), but they are rarely the culprits.[118]
Other detectives
In addition to Poirot and Marple, Christie also created amateur detectives Thomas Beresford and his wife, Prudence "Tuppence" née Cowley, who appear in four novels and one collection of short stories published between 1922 and 1974. Unlike her other sleuths, the Beresfords were only in their early twenties when introduced in The Secret Adversary, and were allowed to age alongside their creator.[27]: 19–20 She treated their stories with a lighter touch, giving them a "dash and verve" which was not universally admired by critics.[28]: 63 Their last adventure, Postern of Fate, was Christie's last novel.[12]: 477
Harley Quin was "easily the most unorthodox" of Christie's fictional detectives.[28]: 70 Inspired by Christie's affection for the figures from the Harlequinade, the semi-supernatural Quin always works with an elderly, conventional man called Satterthwaite. The pair appear in fourteen short stories, twelve of which were collected in 1930 as The Mysterious Mr. Quin.[27]: 78, 80 Mallowan described these tales as "detection in a fanciful vein, touching on the fairy story, a natural product of Agatha's peculiar imagination".[27]: 80 Satterthwaite also appears in a novel, Three Act Tragedy, and a short story, "Dead Man's Mirror", both of which feature Poirot.[27]: 81
Another of her lesser-known characters is Parker Pyne, a retired civil servant who assists unhappy people in an unconventional manner.[27]: 118–119 The twelve short stories which introduced him, Parker Pyne Investigates (1934), are best remembered for "The Case of the Discontented Soldier", which features Ariadne Oliver, "an amusing and satirical self-portrait of Agatha Christie". Over the ensuing decades, Oliver reappeared in seven novels. In most of them she assists Poirot.[27]: 120
Plays
![Colour photograph of a large, book-shaped bronze memorial](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Agatha_Christie_Memorial_%28cropped%29.jpg/170px-Agatha_Christie_Memorial_%28cropped%29.jpg)
In 1928, Michael Morton adapted The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for the stage under the title Alibi.[2]: 177 The play enjoyed a respectable run, but Christie disliked the changes made to her work and, in future, preferred to write for the theatre herself. The first of her own stage works was Black Coffee, which received good reviews when it opened in the West End in late 1930.[12]: 277, 301 She followed this up with adaptations of her detective novels: And Then There Were None in 1943, Appointment with Death in 1945, and The Hollow in 1951.[2]: 242, 251, 288
In the 1950s, "the theatre ... engaged much of Agatha's attention".[12]: 360 She next adapted her short radio play into The Mousetrap, which premiered in the West End in 1952, produced by Peter Saunders. Her expectations for the play were not high; she believed it would run no more than eight months.[10]: 500 It has long since made theatrical history, staging its 27,500th performance in September 2018.[119][120][121][122] The play closed down in March 2020, when all UK theatres shut due to the coronavirus pandemic.[123][124] In 1953, she followed this with Witness for the Prosecution, whose Broadway production won the New York Drama Critics' Circle award for best foreign play of 1954 and earned Christie an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.[2]: 300 [110]: 262 Spider's Web, an original work written for actress Margaret Lockwood at her request, premiered in 1954 and was also a hit.[2]: 297, 300
Christie said, "Plays are much easier to write than books, because you can see them in your mind's eye, you are not hampered by all that description which clogs you so terribly in a book and stops you from getting on with what's happening."[10]: 459 In a letter to her daughter, Christie said being a playwright was "a lot of fun!".[12]: 474
As Mary Westmacott
Christie published six mainstream novels under the name Mary Westmacott, a pseudonym which gave her the freedom to explore "her most private and precious imaginative garden".[12]: 366–367 [27]: 87–88 These books typically received better reviews than her detective and thriller fiction.[12]: 366 Of the first, Giant's Bread published in 1930, a reviewer for The New York Times wrote, "... her book is far above the average of current fiction, in fact, comes well under the classification of a 'good book'. And it is only a satisfying novel that can claim that appellation."[125] After her authorship of the first four Westmacott novels was revealed by a journalist in 1949, she wrote two more, the last in 1956.[12]: 366
The other Westmacott titles are: Unfinished Portrait (1934), Absent in the Spring (1944), The Rose and the Yew Tree (1948), A Daughter's a Daughter (1952), and The Burden (1956).
Non-fiction works
Christie published few non-fiction works. Come, Tell Me How You Live, about working on an archaeological dig, was drawn from her life with Mallowan. The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery is a collection of correspondence from her 1922 Grand Tour of the British empire, including South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Agatha Christie: An Autobiography was published posthumously in 1977 and adjudged the Best Critical / Biographical Work at the 1978 Edgar Awards.[126]
Titles
Many of Christie's works from 1940 onward have titles drawn from literature, with the original context of the title typically printed as an epigraph.[127]
The inspirations for some of Christie's titles include:
- William Shakespeare's works: Sad Cypress, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, There is a Tide ..., Absent in the Spring, and The Mousetrap, for example. Osborne notes that "Shakespeare is the writer most quoted in the works of Agatha Christie";[27]: 164
- The Bible: Evil Under the Sun, The Burden, and The Pale Horse;
- Other works of literature: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (from Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott"), The Moving Finger (from Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám), The Rose and the Yew Tree (from T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets), Postern of Fate (from James Elroy Flecker's "Gates of Damascus"), Endless Night (from William Blake's Auguries of Innocence), N or M? (from the Book of Common Prayer), and Come, Tell Me How You Live (from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass).
Christie biographer Gillian Gill said, "Christie's writing has the sparseness, the directness, the narrative pace, and the universal appeal of the fairy story, and it is perhaps as modern fairy stories for grown-up children that Christie's novels succeed."[113]: 208 Reflecting a juxtaposition of innocence and horror, numerous Christie titles were drawn from well-known children's nursery rhymes: And Then There Were None (from "Ten Little Niggers"),[128] One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (from "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe"), Five Little Pigs (from "This Little Piggy"), Crooked House (from "There Was a Crooked Man"), A Pocket Full of Rye (from "Sing a Song of Sixpence"), Hickory Dickory Dock (from "Hickory Dickory Dock"), and Three Blind Mice (from "Three Blind Mice").[113]: 207–208
Critical reception and legacy
Christie is regularly referred to as the "Queen of Crime" or "Queen of Mystery", and is considered a master of suspense, plotting, and characterisation.[12]: 356–408 [129][130][131] In 1955, she became the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award.[126] She was named "Best Writer of the Century" and the Hercule Poirot series of books was named "Best Series of the Century" at the 2000 Bouchercon World Mystery Convention.[132] In 2013, she was voted "best crime writer" in a survey of 600 members of the Crime Writers' Association of professional novelists.[115] The writer Raymond Chandler criticised the artificiality of her books, as did Symons.[133][104]: 100–130 The literary critic Edmund Wilson described her prose as banal and her characterisations as superficial.[134][i]
In 2012, Christie was among the people selected by the artist Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous work, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, "to celebrate the British cultural figures he most admires".[137][138]
In 2015, in honour of the 125th anniversary of her birth, twenty-five contemporary mystery writers and one publisher gave their views on Christie's works. Many of the authors had read Christie's novels first, before other mystery writers, in English or in their native language, influencing their own writing, and nearly all still viewed her as the "Queen of Crime" and creator of the plot twists used by mystery authors. Nearly all had one or more favourites among Christie's mysteries and found her books still good to read nearly 100 years after her first novel was published. Just one of the twenty-five authors held with Wilson's views.[139]
In 2016, one hundred years after Christie wrote her first detective story, the Royal Mail released six stamps in her honour, featuring The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, The Body in the Library, and A Murder is Announced. The Guardian reported that, "Each design incorporates microtext, UV ink and thermochromic ink. These concealed clues can be revealed using either a magnifying glass, UV light or body heat and provide pointers to the mysteries' solutions."[140][141]
Writing in The New Yorker, Joan Acocella said, "With Christie ... we are dealing not so much with a literary figure as with a broad cultural phenomenon, like Barbie or the Beatles."[142] As of 2018[update], Guinness World Records listed Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time. As of 2020[update], her novels had sold more than two billion copies in forty-four languages. Half the sales are of English language editions, and half are translations.[143][144] According to Index Translationum, as of 2020[update], she was the most-translated individual author.[145][146] In 2015 the Christie estate claimed And Then There Were None was "the best selling crime novel of all time",[147] with approximately 100 million sales, also making it one of the highest selling books of all time.[117][148]
Adaptations
Christie's works have been adapted for cinema and television. The first was the 1928 British film The Passing of Mr. Quin. Poirot's first film appearance was in 1931 in Alibi, which starred Austin Trevor as Christie's sleuth.[149]: 14–18 Margaret Rutherford played Marple in a series of films released in the 1960s. Christie liked her acting, but considered the first film "pretty poor" and thought no better of the rest.[12]: 430–431
She felt differently about the 1974 film Murder on the Orient Express, directed by Sidney Lumet, which featured major stars and high production values; her attendance at the London premiere was one of her last public outings.[12]: 476, 482 [149]: 57 In 2016, a new film version was released, directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also starred, wearing "the most extravagant mustache moviegoers have ever seen".[150]
The television adaptation Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989–2013), with David Suchet in the title role, ran for seventy episodes over thirteen series. It received nine BAFTA award nominations and won four BAFTA awards in 1990–1992.[151] The television series Miss Marple (1984–1992), with Joan Hickson as "the BBC's peerless Miss Marple", adapted all twelve Marple novels.[12]: 500 The French television series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie (2009–2012, 2013–2020), adapted thirty-six of Christie's stories.[152][153]
Christie's books have also been adapted for BBC Radio, a video game series, and graphic novels.[154][155][156][157]
Interests and influences
Pharmacology
During the First World War, Christie took a break from nursing to train for the Apothecaries Hall Examination.[109]: xi While she subsequently found dispensing in the hospital pharmacy monotonous, and thus less enjoyable than nursing, her new knowledge provided her with a background in potentially toxic drugs. Early in the Second World War, she brought her skills up to date at Torquay Hospital.[10]: 235, 470
As Michael C. Gerald puts it, her "activities as a hospital dispenser during both World Wars not only supported the war effort but also provided her with an appreciation of drugs as therapeutic agents and poisons ... These hospital experiences were also likely responsible for the prominent role physicians, nurses, and pharmacists play in her stories."[109]: viii There were to be many medical practitioners, pharmacists, and scientists, naïve or suspicious, in Christie's cast of characters; featuring in Murder in Mesopotamia, Cards on the Table, The Pale Horse, and Mrs. McGinty's Dead, among many others.[109]
Gillian Gill notes that the murder method in Christie's first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, "comes right out of Agatha Christie's work in the hospital dispensary".[113]: 34 In an interview with journalist Marcelle Bernstein, Christie stated, "I don't like messy deaths ... I'm more interested in peaceful people who die in their own beds and no one knows why."[158] With her expert knowledge, Christie had no need of poisons unknown to science, which were forbidden under Ronald Knox's "Ten Rules for Detective Fiction".[110]: 58 Arsenic, aconite, strychnine, digitalis, thallium, and other substances were used to dispatch victims in the ensuing decades.[109]
Archaeology
The lure of the past came up to grab me. To see a dagger slowly appearing, with its gold glint, through the sand was romantic. The carefulness of lifting pots and objects from the soil filled me with a longing to be an archaeologist myself.
Agatha Christie[10]: 364
In her youth, Christie showed little interest in antiquities.[12]: 68 After her marriage to Mallowan in 1930, she accompanied him on annual expeditions, spending three to four months at a time in Syria and Iraq at excavation sites at Ur, Nineveh, Tell Arpachiyah, Chagar Bazar, Tell Brak, and Nimrud.[12]: 301, 304, 313, 414 The Mallowans also took side trips whilst travelling to and from expedition sites, visiting Italy, Greece, Egypt, Iran, and the Soviet Union, among other places.[2]: 188–191, 199, 212 [10]: 429–437 Their experiences travelling and living abroad are reflected in novels such as Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and Appointment with Death.[12]: 514(note 6) [159]
For the 1931 digging season at Nineveh, Christie bought a writing table to continue her own work; in the early 1950s, she paid to add a small writing room to the team's house at Nimrud.[12]: 301 [27]: 244 She also devoted time and effort each season in "making herself useful by photographing, cleaning, and recording finds; and restoring ceramics, which she especially enjoyed".[160][28]: 20–21 She also provided funds for the expeditions.[12]: 414
Many of the settings for Christie's books were inspired by her archaeological fieldwork in the Middle East; this is reflected in the detail with which she describes them – for instance, the temple of Abu Simbel as depicted in Death on the Nile – while the settings for They Came to Baghdad were places she and Mallowan had recently stayed.[2]: 212, 283–284 Similarly, she drew upon her knowledge of daily life on a dig throughout Murder in Mesopotamia.[108]: 269 Archaeologists and experts in Middle Eastern cultures and artefacts featured in her works include Dr Eric Leidner in Murder in Mesopotamia and Signor Richetti in Death on the Nile.[161]: 187, 226–227
After the Second World War, Christie chronicled her time in Syria in Come, Tell Me How You Live, which she described as "small beer – a very little book, full of everyday doings and happenings".[69]: (Foreword) From 8 November 2001 to March 2002, The British Museum presented a "colourful and episodic exhibition" called Agatha Christie and Archaeology: Mystery in Mesopotamia which illustrated how her activities as a writer and as the wife of an archaeologist intertwined.[162]
Portrayals
BBC television released Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures in 2004, in which she is portrayed by Olivia Williams, Anna Massey, and Bonnie Wright (at different stages in her life). ITV's Perspectives: "The Mystery of Agatha Christie" (2013) is hosted by David Suchet.
Some of Christie's fictional portrayals have explored and offered accounts of her disappearance in 1926. The film Agatha (1979), with Vanessa Redgrave, has Christie sneaking away to plan revenge against her husband; Christie's heirs sued unsuccessfully to prevent the film's distribution.[163] The Doctor Who episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (17 May 2008), with Fenella Woolgar, portrays Christie in her early writing career and explains her disappearance as the result of having suffered a temporary breakdown owing to a brief psychic link being formed between her and an alien wasp called the Vespiform. The film Agatha and the Truth of Murder (2018) sends her under cover to solve the murder of Florence Nightingale's goddaughter, Florence Nightingale Shore. A fictionalised account of Christie's disappearance is also the central theme of a Korean musical, Agatha.[164]
Other portrayals, such as the Hungarian film, Kojak Budapesten (1980) create their own scenarios involving Christie's criminal skill. In the TV play, Murder by the Book (1986), Christie (Dame Peggy Ashcroft) murders one of her fictional-turned-real characters, Poirot. Christie features as a character in Gaylord Larsen's Dorothy and Agatha and The London Blitz Murders by Max Allan Collins.[165][166] A young Agatha is depicted in the Spanish historical television series Gran Hotel (2011) in which she finds inspiration to write her new novel while aiding local detectives. In the alternative history television film Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar (2018), Christie becomes involved in a murder case at an archaeological dig in Iraq.[167]
See also
- Agatha Christie bibliography (lists of Christie's works)
- Agatha Christie indult (an oecumenical request to which Christie was signatory seeking permission for the occasional use of the Tridentine (Latin) mass in England and Wales)
- Agatha Awards (literary awards for mystery and crime writers)
- Agatha Christie Award (Japan) (literary award for unpublished mystery novels)
- List of solved missing persons cases
Notes
- ^ Most biographers give Christie's mother's place of birth as Belfast but do not provide sources. Current primary evidence, including census entries (place of birth Dublin), her baptism record (Dublin), and her father's service record and regimental history (when her father was in Dublin), indicates she was almost certainly born in Dublin in the first quarter of 1854.[6][7][8]
- ^ Boehmer's death registration states he died at age 49 from bronchitis after retiring from the army,[9] but Christie and her biographers have consistently claimed he was killed in a riding accident while still a serving officer.[10]: 5 [11][2]: 2 [12]: 9–10
- ^ Dorothy L. Sayers, who visited the "scene of the disappearance", would later incorporate details in her book Unnatural Death.[35]
- ^ The notice placed by Christie in The Times (11 December 1926, p.1) gives the first name as Teresa, but her hotel register signature more naturally reads Tressa; newspapers reported that Christie used Tressa on other occasions during her disappearance (including joining a library).[39]
- ^ Christie hinted at a nervous breakdown, saying to a woman with similar symptoms, "I think you had better be very careful; it is probably the beginning of a nervous breakdown."[10]: 337
- ^ Christie's authorised biographer includes an account of specialist psychiatric treatment following Christie's disappearance, but the information was obtained at second- or third-hand after her death.[2]: 148–149, 159
- ^ Other authors claim Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express whilst at a dig at Arpachiyah.[2]: 206 [27]: 111
- ^ Christie's familial relationship to Margaret Miller née West was complex. As well as being Christie's maternal great-aunt, Miller was Christie's father's step-mother as well as Christie's mother's foster mother and step-mother-in-law – hence the appellation "Auntie-Grannie".
- ^ Wilson's 1945 essay, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" was dismissive of the detective fiction genre in general but did not mention Christie by name.[135][136]
References
- ^ a b "Obituary. Dame Agatha Christie". The Times. 13 January 1976. p. 16.
'My father,' she [Christie] recalled, 'was a gentleman of substance, and never did a handsturn in his life, and he was a most agreeable man.'
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au Morgan, Janet P. (1984). Agatha Christie: A Biography. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-216330-9. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- ^ a b Marriage Register. St Peter's Church, Bayswater [Notting Hill], Middlesex, 1878, No. 399, p. 200.
- ^ Birth Certificate. General Register Office for England and Wales, 1890 September Quarter, Newton Abbot, volume 5b, page 151. [Christie's forenames were not registered.]
- ^ a b Baptism Register. Parish of Tormohun, Devon, 1890, No. 267, [n.p.].
- ^ 1871 England Census. Class: RG10; Piece: 3685; Folio: 134; Page: 44
- ^ Statement of Services: Frederick Boehmer, 91st Foot. The National Archives, Kew. WO 76/456, page 57. [Also states his daughter Clarissa Margaret was baptised in Dublin.]
- ^ a b Goff, Gerald Lionel Joseph (1891). Historical records of the 91st Argyllshire Highlanders, now the 1st Battalion Princess Louise's Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, containing an account of the Regiment in 1794, and of its subsequent services to 1881. R. Bentley. pp. xv, 218–219, 322.
- ^ a b Burials in the Parish of St Helier, in the Island of Jersey. 1863. p. 303.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Christie, Agatha (1977). Agatha Christie: An Autobiography. New York City: Dodd, Mead & Company. ISBN 0-396-07516-9.
- ^ Robyns, Gwen (1978). The Mystery of Agatha Christie. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. p. 13. ISBN 0-385-12623-9.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at Thompson, Laura (2008), Agatha Christie: An English Mystery, London: Headline Review, ISBN 978-0-7553-1488-1
- ^ Marriage Register. Parish of Westbourne, Sussex, 1863, No. 318, p. 159.
- ^ Naturalisation Papers: Miller, Nathaniel Frary, from the United States. Certificate 4798 issued 25 August 1865. The National Archives, Kew. HO 1/123/4798.
- ^ Birth Certificate. General Register Office for England and Wales, 1879 March Quarter, Newton Abbot, volume 5b, page 162.
- ^ "Births". London Evening Standard. 26 June 1880. p. 1.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Death Certificate. General Register Office for England and Wales, 1869 June Quarter, Westbourne, volume 02B, page 230.
- ^ "Auctions. Torquay". Western Times [Exeter, Devon]. 5 October 1880. p. 1.
- ^ "Arrivals". Torquay Times. 20 May 1881. p. 4.
- ^ a b The Mystery of Agatha Christie – A Trip With David Suchet (Directed by Claire Lewins). Testimony Films (for ITV).
- ^ Death Certificate. General Register Office for England and Wales, 1901 December Quarter, Brentford, volume 3A, page 71. ("Cause of Death. Bright's disease, chronic. Pneumonia. Coma and heart failure.")
- ^ "The House of Dreams". agathachristie.com. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Curran, John. "75 facts about Christie". The Home of Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie Limited. Retrieved 21 July 2017.
- ^ Curtis, Fay (24 December 2014). "Desert Island Doc: Agatha Christie's wartime wedding". Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives. Retrieved 30 December 2014.
- ^ Marriage Register. Parish of Emmanuel, Clifton, 1914, No. 305, p. 153.
- ^ "Agatha Christie – British Red Cross". British Red Cross. Retrieved 26 October 2019.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Osborne, Charles (2001). The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie: A Biographical Companion to the Works of Agatha Christie. New York City: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-28130-7.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Fitzgibbon, Russell H. (1980). The Agatha Christie Companion. Bowling Green, Ohio: The Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
- ^ Prichard, Mathew (2012). The Grand Tour: Around The World With The Queen Of Mystery. New York City: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0-06-219122-9.
- ^ Jones, Sam (29 July 2011). "Agatha Christie's Surfing Secret Revealed". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 July 2011.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Agatha Christie 'one of Britain's first stand-up surfers'". The Daily Telegraph. 29 July 2011. Retrieved 30 July 2011.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b "A Penalty of Realism". The Evening News. Portsmouth, Hampshire. 20 August 1926. p. 6.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "100 Police Scour Downs for Missing Woman Novelist". Yorkshire Evening Post. 6 December 1926. p. 1.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Christie's Life: 1925–1928 A Difficult Start". The Home of Agatha Christie. Retrieved 12 February 2017.
- ^ a b c Thorpe, Vanessa (15 October 2006). "Christie's most famous mystery solved at last". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 21 May 2013.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Mrs Christie Found in a Yorkshire Spa". The New York Times. 15 December 1926. p. 1. Retrieved 16 September 2009.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Agatha Christie's Harrogate mystery". BBC News. 3 December 2009. Retrieved 17 March 2013.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "The Details of this Strange Case ..." Classic Lodges. 2019. Retrieved 27 October 2019.
- ^ a b "What We Want to Know about Mrs. Christie". The Leeds Mercury. 16 December 1926. p. 1.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "My Point is This. What I want to Know About Mrs. Christie". The Leeds Mercury. 16 December 1926. p. 4.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Medium Looks for Mrs. Christie". The Leeds Mercury. 16 December 1926. p. 9.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b "Two Doctors Examine Mrs. Christie". The Leeds Mercury. 17 December 1926. p. 1.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Mrs Christie. Doctors Certify Loss of Memory". Western Daily Press. 17 December 1926. p. 12.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Dissociative Fugue". Psychology Today. 17 March 2012. Retrieved 17 March 2013.
- ^ Cade, Jared (1997), Agatha Christie and the Missing Eleven Days, Peter Owen, ISBN 0-7206-1112-1
- ^ Adams, Cecil (2 April 1982), "Why did mystery writer Agatha Christie mysteriously disappear?", The Chicago Reader, retrieved 19 May 2008
- ^ "Mrs. Christie Leaves". Daily Herald. 24 January 1927. p. 1.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Inwards Passenger Lists. The National Archives, Kew. Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors, BT26/837/112.
- ^ "Col. Christie Married". Gloucestershire Echo. 6 November 1928. p. 5. [Includes divorce details].
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Mrs. Christie. Novelist Granted Decree Nisi". The Yorkshire Post. 21 April 1928. p. 17.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b "Interview with Max Mallowan". BBC. Retrieved 21 July 2017.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Marriage Certificate. Scotland – Statutory Register of Marriages, 685/04 0938, 11 September 1930, District of St Giles, Edinburgh.
- ^ "World-famous Author Agatha Christie and The Mysterious Story of Her Lost 11 Days". Pera Palace Hotel. 19 September 2018. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Dame Agatha Christie & Sir Max Mallowan". Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Scheme. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Sinodun Players". Sinodun Players. Retrieved 9 February 2018.
- ^ "Agatha's Greenway". National Trust. Retrieved 30 April 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Wagstaff, Vanessa; Poole, Stephen (2004), Agatha Christie: A Reader's Companion, Aurum Press, p. 14, ISBN 1-84513-015-4
- ^ "Thallium poisoning in fact and in fiction". The Pharmaceutical Journal. 277: 648. 25 November 2006. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
- ^ John Emsley, "The poison prescribed by Agatha Christie", The Independent, 20 July 1992.
- ^ a b Richard Norton-Taylor (4 February 2013). "Agatha Christie was investigated by MI5 over Bletchley Park mystery". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 29 March 2013.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood". The London Gazette. No. Supplement: 40669. 30 December 1955. p. 11.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "D.B.E." The London Gazette. No. Supplement: 45262. 31 December 1970. p. 7.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Kastan, David Scott (2006). The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. p. 467. ISBN 978-0-19-516921-8.
- ^ Reitz, Caroline (2006), "Christie, Agatha", The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acref/9780195169218.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-19-516921-8
- ^ "Knights Bachelor". The London Gazette. No. Supplement: 44600. 31 May 1968. p. 6300.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Devlin, Kate (4 April 2009). "Agatha Christie 'had Alzheimer's disease when she wrote final novels'". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 28 August 2009.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Flood, Alison (3 April 2009). "Study claims Agatha Christie had Alzheimer's". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 1 August 2009. Retrieved 28 August 2009.
- ^ "The Real Agatha Christie". The Sydney Morning Herald. 30 April 1946. p. 6. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b Christie Mallowan, Agatha (1990) [1946]. Come, Tell Me How You Live. London: Fontana Books. ISBN 0-00-637594-4.
- ^ "Data for financial year ending 05 April 2018 – The Agatha Christie Trust For Children". Registered Charities in England and Wales. Retrieved 7 November 2019.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Agatha Christie memorial fund". The Times. 27 April 1976. p. 16.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b "1976: Crime writer Agatha Christie dies". BBC on this Day. 12 January 1976. Retrieved 30 October 2019.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Deaths". The Times. 14 January 1976. p. 26.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Yurdan, Marilyn (2010). Oxfordshire Graves and Gravestones. Stroud: The History Press. ISBN 9780752452579.
- ^ "St. Marys Cholsey - Agatha Christie". St Marys Cholsey. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
- ^ a b c d e Obituary: Rosalind Hicks, The Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2004. Retrieved 25 January 2015.
- ^ "1976: Crime writer Agatha Christie dies". BBC on this Day. 12 January 1976. Retrieved 30 October 2019.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Booker is ready for more". The Newcastle Journal. 16 September 1977. p. 4.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b c Acorn Media buys stake in Agatha Christie estate, The Guardian, 29 December 2012.
- ^ "£106,000 will of Dame Agatha Christie". The Times. 1 May 1976. p. 2.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b Agatha Christie begins new chapter after £10m selloff, The Free Library, 4 June 1998.
- ^ Taylor, Jerome. "The Big Question: How big is the Agatha Christie industry, and what explains her enduring appeal?". The Independent. Retrieved 6 March 2015.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "About Agatha Christie Limited". The Home of Agatha Christie. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
- ^ "Why do we still love the 'cosy crime' of Agatha Christie?". The Independent. 14 September 2017. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Sweney, Mark (29 February 2012). "Acorn Media buys stake in Agatha Christie estate". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 March 2012.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "RLJ Entertainment". RLJ Entertainment. 2020. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "New era for BBC as the new home of Agatha Christie adaptations", Radio Times, 28 February 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2015.
- ^ "BBC One – Partners in Crime – Episode Guide". BBC. Retrieved 16 April 2016.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "BBC One – And Then There Were None". BBC. 28 December 2015. Retrieved 16 April 2016.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "BBC One plans lots more Agatha Christie". BBC News. 24 August 2016. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "BBC One – The Witness for the Prosecution". BBC. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Ed Westwick removed from BBC Agatha Christie drama Ordeal By Innocence". BBC News. 5 January 2018. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "BBC One – Ordeal by Innocence". BBC. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "All-star cast announced for new BBC One Agatha Christie thriller The ABC Murders". BBC. 24 May 2018. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "The ABC Murders Begins on BBC One on Boxing Day at 9pm". BBC Media Centre. 15 December 2018. Retrieved 20 December 2018.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Hercule Poirot Reading List" (PDF). The Home of Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie Limited. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 March 2016. Retrieved 19 January 2017.
- ^ Gross, John (2006). The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes. Oxford University Press. p. 267. ISBN 978-0199543410.
- ^ a b Mills, Selina (15 September 2008). "Dusty clues to Christie unearthed". BBC News. Retrieved 29 April 2020.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Vaughan, Susan (25 January 2018). "Dame Agatha and Her Orient Express". Maine Crime Writers. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
- ^ Hobbs, JD (6 August 1975). "Poirot's Obituary". US: Poirot. Retrieved 11 April 2020.
- ^ "The Monogram Murders". Agatha Christie.com. Archived from the original on 3 April 2015. Retrieved 11 April 2015.
- ^ a b "An interview with Sophie Hannah". The Home of Agatha Christie. Retrieved 29 April 2020.
- ^ "The Mystery of Three Quarters". HarperCollinsPublishers. 2020. Retrieved 29 April 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b c Symons, Julian (1972). Mortal Consequences: A History from the Detective Story to the Crime Novel. New York City: Harper & Row, Publishers.
- ^ Winn, Dilys (1977). Murder Ink: The Mystery Reader's Companion. New York City: Workman Publishing. p. 3.
- ^ Mezel, Kathy (2007). "Spinsters, Surveillance, and Speech: The Case of Miss Marple, Miss Mole, and Miss Jekyll". The Journal of Modern Literature. 30.2: 103–120.
- ^ Beehler, Sharon A. (1998). ""Close vs. Closed Reading: Interpreting the Clues"". The English Journal. 77.6: 39–43.
- ^ a b c d e Curran, John (2009). Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-200652-3.
- ^ a b c d e Gerald, Michael C. (1993). The Poisonous Pen of Agatha Christie. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-76535-5.
- ^ a b c Curran, John (2011). Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780062065445.
- ^ "John Curran author". HarperCollinsPublishers. 2020. Retrieved 11 April 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ James, P.D. (2009). Talking About Detective Fiction. Random House. ISBN 978-0-307-39882-6. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
- ^ a b c d e Gillian, Gill (1990). Agatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries. New York City: The Free Press. ISBN 002911702X.
- ^ Aldiss, Brian. "BBC Radio 4 – Factual – Desert Island Discs". BBC. Archived from the original on 11 February 2009. Retrieved 22 February 2009.
- ^ a b Brown, Jonathan (5 November 2013). "Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd voted best crime novel ever". The Independent. Retrieved 19 February 2014.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Scott, Sutherland (1953). Blood in Their Ink. London: Stanley Paul.
{{cite book}}
:|work=
ignored (help) - ^ a b Flood, Alison (2 September 2015). "And Then There Were None declared world's favourite Agatha Christie novel". The Guardian.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Pendergast, Bruce (2004), Everyman's Guide to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie, Victoria, BC, Canada: Trafford, p. 399, ISBN 1-4120-2304-1
- ^ Brantley, Ben (26 January 2012). "London Theater Journal: Comfortably Mousetrapped". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 January 2012.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Moss, Stephen (21 November 2012). "The Mousetrap at 60: Why is this the world's longest-running play?". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ The Mousetrap website Archived 23 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine, the-mousetrap.co.uk. Retrieved 2 June 2015.
- ^ "The History". The Mousetrap. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
- ^ "The West End and UK Theatre venues shut down until further notice due to coronavirus". London Theatre Direct. 17 March 2020. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "The London theatres that are closed due to coronavirus". Evening Standard. 22 April 2020. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Book Review". The New York Times. 17 August 1930. p. 7.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b "Edgars Database – Search the Edgars Database". The Edgars. Retrieved 29 April 2020.
- ^ Hopkins, Lisa (2016). "Who Owns the Wood? Appropriating A Midsummer Night's Dream". In Hopkins, L. (ed.). Shakespearean Allusion in Crime Fiction. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. pp. 63–103. ISBN 978-1137538741.
- ^ McAllister, Pam (2001). "Ten Little Who?". In Riley, Dick; McAllister, Pam; Cassiday, Bruce (eds.). The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie (2nd ed.). New York City; London: Continuum. pp. 144–145. ISBN 0-8264-1375-7.
- ^ Wagoner, Mary S. (1986). Agatha Christie. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-6936-6.
- ^ Riley, Dick; McAllister, Pam; Cassiday, Bruce, eds. (2001), The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie (2nd ed.), New York City; London: Continuum, p. 240
- ^ Engelhardt, Sandra (2003), The Investigators of Crime in Literature, Marburg: Tectum Verlag, p. 83
- ^ "Winners and Nominees 2000s". Bouchercon. 22 September 2015. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Chandler, Raymond (1950). "The Simple Art of Murder: An Essay". The Simple Art of Murder. Houghton Mifflin Company.
- ^ Wilson, Edmund (14 October 1944). "Why Do People Read Detective Stories?". The New Yorker.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Wilson, Edmund (20 January 1945). "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?". The New Yorker.
- ^ "Edmund Wilson on Crime Fiction". The Crazy Oik. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "New faces on Sgt Pepper album cover for artist Peter Blake's 80th birthday". The Guardian. 13 November 2016.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Sir Peter Blake's new Beatles' Sgt Pepper's album cover". BBC. 13 November 2016.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Doyle, Martin (15 September 2015). "Agatha Christie: genius or hack? Crime writers pass judgment and pick favourites". The Irish Times. Retrieved 7 December 2015.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Flood, Alison (15 September 2016). "New Agatha Christie stamps deliver hidden clues". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Royal Mail issues Special Stamps to celebrate Agatha Christie". The Home of Agatha Christie. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
- ^ Acocella, Joan. "Queen of Crime". The New Yorker. Retrieved 29 April 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Five record-breaking book facts for National Bookshop Day". Guinness World Records. 4 October 2018. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
78 crime novels have sold an estimated 2 billion copies in 44 languages
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "About Agatha Christie". Agatha Christie Ltd. 2020. Retrieved 29 April 2020.
Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation.
- ^ UNESCO Statistics. "Index Translationum – "Top 50" Author". Official website of UNESCO. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Retrieved 29 April 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Who is the world's most translated author?". thewordpoint.com. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
- ^ "125 Years of Agatha Christie". The Home of Agatha Christie. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
- ^ McClurg, Jocelyn (18 May 2016). "Agatha Christie hits USA TODAY's list". USA Today.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b Palmer, Scott (1993). The Films of Agatha Christie. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd. ISBN 0-7134-7205-7.
- ^ Debruge, Peter (2 November 2017). "Film Review: 'Murder on the Orient Express'". Variety. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "BAFTA Awards Database". BAFTA.org. Archived from the original on 29 May 2013. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
- ^ "Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie". The Home of Agatha Christie. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
- ^ "Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie". France TV (in French). Retrieved 3 May 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "BBC Radio 4 Extra – Hercule Poirot – Episode guide". BBC. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "BBC Radio 4 Extra – Miss Marple – Episode guide". BBC. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Games". The Home of Agatha Christie. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
- ^ "Agatha Christie Graphic Novels Series". goodreads. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
- ^ "Agatha Christie: 'Queen of Crime' Is a Gentlewoman". Los Angeles Times. 8 March 1970. p. 60, quoted in Gerald (1993), p. 4.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Agatha Christie and Archaeology". Special Collections. Newcastle University. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Lubelski, Amy (2002). "Museums: In the Field with Agatha Christie". Archaeology. 55 (2).
Christie always accompanied Mallowan on his excavations, making herself useful by photographing, cleaning, and recording finds; and restoring ceramics, which she especially enjoyed.
- ^ Sova, Dawn B (1996). Agatha Christie A to Z: The Essential Reference to Her Life & Writings. New York City: Facts On File, Inc. ISBN 0-8160-3018-9.
- ^ Glancey, Jonathan (17 November 2001). "Forbidden pleasures". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Axmaker, Sean. "Agatha". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 17 June 2017.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Musical Agatha". Visit Seoul. Seoul Metropolitan Government. Archived from the original on 16 April 2015. Retrieved 10 April 2015.
- ^ Larsen, Gaylord (1990). Dorothy and Agatha: A Mystery Novel. New York City; London: Dutton. ISBN 978-0-525-24865-1. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
- ^ Collins, Max Allan (2004). The London Blitz Murders. New York City: Berkley Prime Crime. ISBN 978-0-425-19805-6.
- ^ Hogan, Michael (15 December 2019). "Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar review – A cut-price Christie for Christmas is still quite a treat". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 29 April 2020.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
Further reading
- Adams, Amanda (2010), Ladies of the Field: Early Women Archaeologists and Their Search for Adventure, Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, ISBN 978-1-55365-433-9.
- "Agatha Christie – the explorer & archaeologist" (PDF). Agatha Christie Limited. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 October 2009. Retrieved 1 March 2012.
- Curran, John (2009). Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-200652-3.
- Curran, John (2011). Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780062065445.
- Curran, John. "75 facts about Christie". The Home of Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie Limited. Retrieved 21 July 2017.
- Gerald, Michael C. (1993). The Poisonous Pen of Agatha Christie. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0292728646.
- Holtorf, Cornelius (2007), Archaeology is a Brand! The meaning of archaeology in contemporary popular culture, Oxford, England: Archaeopress, ISBN 978-1598741797.
- Lubelski, Amy (March–April 2002). "Museums: In the Field with Agatha Christie". Archaeology. Vol. 55, no. 2. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
- Mallowan, Agatha Christie (1977), Agatha Christie: An Autobiography, New York City: Dodd, Mead & Co, ISBN 0-396-07516-9.
- Mallowan, Agatha Christie (1985), Come, Tell Me How You Live, Toronto, New York City: Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-35049-8.
- Morgan, Janet P. (1984). Agatha Christie: A Biography. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-216330-9. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- Prichard, Mathew (2012). The Grand Tour: Around The World With The Queen Of Mystery. New York City: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-219122-9.
- Roaf, Michael; Killick, Robert (1987). "A Mysterious Affair of Styles: The Ninevite 5 Pottery of Northern Mesopotamia". Iraq. 49: 199–230. doi:10.2307/4200273. JSTOR 4200273.
- Thomas, W. G., Murder in Mesopotamia: Agatha Christie and Archaeology, archived from the original on 14 April 2013.
- Thompson, Laura (2008), Agatha Christie: An English Mystery, London: Headline Review, ISBN 978-0-7553-1488-1.
- "Travel and Archaeology". Agatha Christie Limited. Archived from the original on 9 October 2008. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
External links
- The Home of Agatha Christie (official website)
- A Christie reading list (on official website)
- Agatha Christie at IMDb
- Works by Agatha Christie at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Agatha Christie at the Internet Archive
- Works by Agatha Christie at Open Library
- Agatha Christie/Sir Max Mallowan's blue plaque at Cholsey
- Agatha Christie profile and related articles in The Guardian
- Agatha Christie profile on PBS.org
- Agatha Christie profile on FamousAuthors.org
- "The Christie Mystery" (fan site)
- Agatha Christie recording, oral history at the Imperial War Museum
- Agatha Christie business papers at the University of Exeter
- "Shocking Real Murders" (book released to mark the 125th anniversary of Christie's birth)
- Hercule Poirot Central
- The Films of Agatha Christie (1993)
- Agatha Christie
- 1890 births
- 1976 deaths
- 20th-century English novelists
- 20th-century English writers
- 20th-century British dramatists and playwrights
- 20th-century British women writers
- 20th-century British short story writers
- Anthony Award winners
- Booker authors' division
- British autobiographers
- British detective writers
- British women in World War I
- British women short story writers
- Burials in Oxfordshire
- Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
- Ghost story writers
- Edgar Award winners
- English people of American descent
- English crime fiction writers
- English dramatists and playwrights
- English mystery writers
- English short story writers
- English women dramatists and playwrights
- English women novelists
- Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
- Female nurses in World War I
- Female wartime nurses
- Formerly missing people
- Members of the Detection Club
- Missing person cases in England
- People from Cholsey
- People from Sunningdale
- People from Torquay
- Pseudonymous women writers
- Temporary disappearances
- Wives of knights
- Women mystery writers
- Women autobiographers
- Women historical novelists
- Writers of historical mysteries