Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
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Agatha Christie
Lady Mallowan | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller 15 September 1890 Torquay, Devon, England |
| Died | 12 January 1976 (aged 85) Winterbrook House, Winterbrook, Oxfordshire, England[1] |
| Resting place | Church of St Mary, Cholsey, Oxfordshire, England |
| Pen name | Mary Westmacott |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, memoirist |
| Genre | Murder mystery, thriller, crime fiction, detective, romance |
| Literary movement | Golden Age of Detective Fiction |
| Notable works | Creation of characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Murder on the Orient Express, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Death on the Nile, The Murder at the Vicarage, Partners In Crime, The A.B.C. Murders, And Then There Were None, The Mousetrap |
| Spouses |
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| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | James Watts (nephew) |
| Signature |  |
| Website | |
| agathachristie | |
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer. She is known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around her fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Christie also wrote the world's longest-running play, a murder mystery, The Mousetrap,[2] and, under the pen name Mary Westmacott, six romances. In 1971 she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her contribution to literature.[3]
Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon. Before marrying and starting a family in London, she had served in a Devon hospital during the First World War, tending to troops coming back from the trenches. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections,[4] but this changed when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring Hercule Poirot, was published in 1920.[5] During the Second World War, she worked as a pharmacy assistant at University College Hospital, London, acquiring a good knowledge of poisons which feature in many of her novels.
Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly 2 billion copies, and her estate claims that her works come third in the rankings of the world's most-widely published books,[6] behind only Shakespeare's works and the Bible. According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author, having been translated into at least 103 languages.[7] And Then There Were None is Christie's best-selling novel, with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery ever, and one of the best-selling books of all time.[8] Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for longest initial run. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End on 25 November 1952, and as of April 2019 is still running after more than 27,000 performances.[9][10]
In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's highest honour, the Grand Master Award. Later the same year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award by the MWA for Best Play.[11] In 2013, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 fellow writers of the Crime Writers' Association.[12] On 15 September 2015, coinciding with her 125th birthday, And Then There Were None was named the "World's Favourite Christie" in a vote sponsored by the author's estate.[13] Most of her books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics, and more than thirty feature films have been based on her work.
Contents
Life and career[edit]
Childhood and adolescence: 1890–1910[edit]
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15 September 1890 into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon.[14]:1 She was the youngest of three children born to Frederick Alvah Miller, an affluent American stockbroker, and his Irish-born wife Clara Miller née Boehmer.[14]:2–4
Agatha's mother Clara had been born in Belfast in 1854 to Captain Frederick Boehmer and Mary Ann West as the couple's only daughter. Boehmer was killed in a riding accident while stationed on Jersey in April 1863, leaving his widow to raise the child alone on a meagre income. In that same year, 1863, Mary Ann's sister Margaret married a wealthy American, Nathaniel Frary Miller, and the couple settled in Southbourne, West Sussex. Their marriage was childless, but Nathaniel had a son, Frederick, from a previous marriage. Frederick had been sent to Switzerland for his education. Since Mary Ann was virtually penniless and her sister Margaret was wealthy but childless, they arranged that Clara should be raised by her aunt and uncle. It was at the Miller's residence that Clara met Frederick, her maternal aunt's step-son. She and Frederick soon developed a romantic relationship and were married in April 1878.[14]:4–5[14]:2–4
The couple's first child, Margaret Frary Miller (1879–1950), was born in Torquay, where the couple were renting lodgings. Their second child, Louis Montant (1880–1929), was born in the U.S. state of New York, while Frederick and Clara were on a business trip. When Frederick's father Nathaniel died, he left his daughter-in-law Clara £2000; she used this money to purchase a villa in Torquay named "Ashfield" in which to raise her family. It was here that her third and final child, Agatha, was born.[14]:6–7
Christie described her childhood as "very happy".[15]:3 She was surrounded by a series of strong and independent women from an early age.[14]:14 Her time was spent alternating between her home in Devon, her step-grandmother and aunt's house in Ealing, West London, and parts of Southern Europe, where her family would holiday during the winter.[14]:15, 24
Agatha was raised in a household with various esoteric beliefs and, like her siblings, believed that her mother Clara was a psychic with the ability of second sight.[14]:13 Agatha's sister Margaret had been sent to Roedean School in Sussex for her education, but their mother insisted that Agatha receive a home education. As a result, her parents were responsible for teaching her to read and write and to master basic arithmetic, a subject she particularly enjoyed. They also taught her music, and she learned to play both the piano and the mandolin.[14]:20–21 According to biographer Laura Thomson, Clara believed that Agatha should not learn to read until she was eight. However, thanks to her own curiosity, Agatha taught herself to read much earlier.[16] One of the earliest known photographs of Christie depicts her as a little girl with her first dog, whom she called George Washington.[17]
Christie was a voracious reader from an early age. Among her earliest memories were those of reading the children's books written by Mrs Molesworth, including The Adventures of Herr Baby (1881), Christmas Tree Land (1897), and The Magic Nuts (1898). She also read the work of Edith Nesbit, including The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), The Phoenix and the Carpet (1903), and The Railway Children (1906). When a little older, she moved on to reading the surreal verse of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll.[14]:18–19 In April 1901, at age 10, she wrote her first poem, "The cowslip".[17]
She spent much of her childhood apart from other children, although she devoted much time to her pets. She eventually made friends with a group of 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.[14]:23–27 This was her last operatic role for, as she later wrote, "an experience that you really enjoyed should never be repeated".[18]:125
Her father was often ill, suffering from a series of heart attacks. His death in November 1901, aged 55, left the family in an uncertain economic situation. Clara and Agatha continued to live together in their Torquay home, Madge had moved to Abney Hall in Cheadle, Cheshire, with her new husband, and Monty had joined the army and been sent to South Africa to fight in the Boer War. Agatha later claimed that her father's death, occurring when she was 11 years old, marked the end of her childhood.[14]:32–34 In 1902, she was sent to receive a formal education at Miss Guyer's Girls School in Torquay but found it difficult to adjust to the disciplined atmosphere. In 1905, she was sent to Paris where she was educated in three pensions – Mademoiselle Cabernet's, Les Marroniers, and then Miss Dryden's – the last of which served primarily as a finishing school.[14]:22–23, 37
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