Agatha Christie

1890 - 1976

Agatha Miller was born in Torquay, England on September 15, 1890.

As a child, she read a lot of detective stories and she was interested in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Graham Green and Charles Dickens.  

Her mother encouraged her to write from very early age.

 

She met her first husband Archibald Christie at a ball.

They married in 1914.

 

During the first World War (1914-1918) she worked as a  volunteer nurse and assistant in a chemist s shop.

It was at this time she learned much about drugs and poisons, knowledge which she would use in her mystery writing.

 

Her daughter Rosalie was born in 1919.

At this time she also began her writing career.

 

In 1928 her marriage ended in divorce.

Four years later,  she met Max Mallowan, who was 14 years her junior.

They married that same year.

Agatha Christie is the world's best-known mystery writer.

The Guinness Book of Records listed her as the best-selling fiction author of all time with an estimated two billion copies of her works sold.

Her work has been translated into more than a hundred languages.

 

It is often said that she is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare.

 

Agatha Christie wrote about the world she knew and saw, drawing on the military gents, lords and ladies, spinsters, widows and doctors of her family’s circle of friends and acquaintances.

 

She was a natural observer and her descriptions of village politics, local rivalries and family jealousies are often painfully accurate.

 

Agatha Christie’s characters are based on her daily observations, drawn from everyday situations.

 

 

Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), was also the first to feature her eccentric Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian detective who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes.

In a writing career that spanned more than half a century, Agatha Christie wrote 80 novels , short story collections and a dozen plays.

She also wrote six romantic novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.

 

  

 

Several of her works were made into successful feature films, the most notable being Murder on the Orient Express (1974).

And Then There Were None is the bestselling novel around the world. It is one of her acknowledged masterpieces.

 

In 1971, she achieved her country's highest honor when she received the Order of Dame Commander of the British Empire. 

 

 

She died peacefully at home on January 12, 1976 after a short cold.

 

Her death made front page news worldwide and there were lengthy obituaries in the leading national newspapers.

 

Medallion paperweight

celebrating

Agatha's 100th birthday in 1990