Agatha Christie's biography

Agatha Christie's biography.

Written by:
Dead_soul/ Bloody_ashes

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Christie (1890-1976), prolific British author of mystery novels and short stories, is especially famous as the creator of Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective, and Miss Jane Marple.

Christie was born in Torquay, in the county of Devon, as the daughter of Frederick Alvah Miller and Clarissa Miller. Her father died when she was a child. Christie was educated at home, where her mother encouraged her to write from a very early age. At sixteen she was sent to school in Paris where she studied singing and piano. In 1914 Christie married Archibald Christie, an officer in the Flying Royal Corps; their daughter, Rosalind, was born in 1919.

Christie, already upset by the recent death of her mother, disappeared. All of England became wrapped up in the case of the now famous missing writer. She was found three weeks later in a small hotel, explaining to police that she had lost her memory. Thereafter, it was never again mentioned or elaborated upon by Christie.

She later found happiness with her marriage in 1930 to Max Mallowan, a young archaeologist who she met on a trip to Mesopotamia.

Christie's first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introduced Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective, who appeared in more than 40 books, the last of which was Curtain (1975). Christie's other famous detective, Miss Marple, an elderly spinster, was a typical English character, but while Poirot used logic and rational methods, Marple relied on her feminine sensitivity and empathy to solve crimes. Marple was featured in 17 novels, the first being Murder At The Vicarage (1930) and the last Sleeping Murder (1977). Both Poirot and Marple have been adapted for film and television.

In 56 years Christie wrote 66 detective novels, among the best of which are The Murder of Roger Acroyd, Murder On The Orient Express (1934), Death On The Nile (1937). In addition to these works, Christie wrote her autobiography (1977), and several plays, including The Mousetrap, which ran more than 30 years continuously in London.

Christie's marriage broke up in 1926. Archie Christie, who worked in the City, announced that he had fallen in love with a younger woman, Nancy Neele. In the same year Christie's beloved mother died. The story of Christie's real life adventure in the 1926, when she disappeared for a time and lived in a Harrowgate hotel under the name Mrs. Neele, was the basis for the film Agatha.

During WW II Agatha worked in the dispensary of University College Hospital in London. After the war she continued to write prolifically, also gaining success on the stage and in the cinema. Witness for the Prosecution, for example, was chosen the best foreign play of the 1954-55 season by the New York Drama Critics Circle. Christie was most innovative when she revealed the guilty party in her detective stories, it has been the narrator, a group of people, a serial killer who tries to hide an obvious motive for his killing one of the victims, and so forth.

In 1967 Christie became president of the British Detection Club, and in 1971 she was made a Dame of the British Empire. Christie died on January 12, 1976. With over one hundred novels and 103 translations into foreign languages, Christie was by the time of her death the best-selling English novelist of all time and known as "The queen of crime".