AGATHA CHRISTIE
'Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan', DBE (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), mainly known as 'Agatha Christie', was an English crime fiction writer. She also wrote romance novels under the name 'Mary Westmacott', but is chiefly remembered for her 80 detective novels. Her work with these novels, particularly featuring detectives Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple, have given her the title the 'Queen of Crime' and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre.
Christie has been called — by the Guinness Book of World Records, among others — the best-selling writer of books of all time, and the best-selling writer of any kind second only to William Shakespeare. An estimated one billion copies of her novels have been sold in English, and another billion in 103 other languages.http://uk.agathachristie.com/site/about_christie/queen_of_crime.php As an example of her broad appeal, she is the all-time best-selling author in France, with over 40 million copies sold in French (as of 2003) versus 22 million for Emile Zola, the nearest contender.
Her stage play, ''The Mousetrap'', holds the record for the longest run ever in London, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre on 25 November 1952, and as of 2007 is still running after more than 20,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and in the same year, ''Witness for the Prosecution'' was given an Edgar Award by the MWA, for Best Play. Most of her books and short stories have been filmed, some many times over (''Murder on the Orient Express'', ''Death on the Nile'', ''4.50 From Paddington''), and many have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics.
In 1998, the control of the rights to most of the literary works of Agatha Christie passed to the company Chorion, when it purchased a majority 64% share in Agatha Christie Limited.[1]
Biography
A plaque from the Agatha Christie Mile at Torre Abbey in Torquay.
Agatha Christie was born as 'Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller' in Torquay, Devon, to an American father and an English mother. She never held or claimed United States citizenship. Her father was Frederick Miller, a rich American stockbroker, and her mother was Clara Boehmer, a British aristocrat. Christie had a sister, Margaret Frary Miller (1879–1950), called Madge, eleven years her senior, and a brother, Louis Montant Miller (1880–1929), called Monty, ten years older than Christie. Her father died when she was very young. Her mother resorted to teaching her at home, encouraging her to write at a very young age. At the age of 16 she went to a school in Paris to study singing and piano.
Her first marriage, an unhappy one, was in 1914 to Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. The couple had one daughter, Rosalind Hicks, and divorced in 1928.
During World War I she worked at a hospital and then a pharmacy, a job that influenced her work; many of the murders in her books are carried out with poison. (See also cyanide, ricin, and thallium.)
On 8 December 1926, while living in Sunningdale in Berkshire, she disappeared for ten days, causing great interest in the press. Her car was found in a chalk pit in Newland's Corner, Surrey. She was eventually found staying at the Swan Hydro (now the Old Swan hotel) in Harrogate under the name of the woman with whom her husband had recently admitted to having an affair. She claimed to have suffered a nervous breakdown and a fugue state caused by the death of her mother and her husband's infidelity. Opinions are still divided as to whether this was a publicity stunt. Public sentiment at the time was negative, with many feeling that an alleged publicity stunt had cost the taxpayers a substantial amount of money. A 1979 film, ''Agatha'', starring Vanessa Redgrave as Christie, recounted a fictionalised version of the disappearance. Other media accounts of this event exist; it was featured on a segment of Paul Harvey's ''The Rest of the Story'', for example.
In 1930, Christie married a Roman Catholic (despite her divorce and her Anglican faith), the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. Mallowan was 14 years younger than Christie, and his travels with her contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Their marriage was happy in the early years, and endured despite Mallowan's many affairs in later life, notably with Barbara Parker, whom he married in 1977, the year after Christie's death. Other novels (such as ''And Then There Were None'') were set in and around Torquay, Devon, where she was born. Christie's 1934 novel, ''Murder on the Orient Express'' was written in the Pera Palas hotel in Istanbul, Turkey, the southern terminus of the railroad. The hotel maintains Christie's room as a memorial to the author. The Greenway Estate in Devon, acquired by the couple as a summer residence in 1938, is now in the care of the National Trust. Christie often stayed at Abney Hall in Cheshire, which was owned by her brother-in-law, James Watts. She based at least two of her stories on the hall: The short story ''The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding'' which is in the ''story collection'' of the same name and the novel ''After the Funeral''. "Abney became Agatha's greatest inspiration for country-house life, with all the servants and grandeur which have been woven into her plots. The descriptions of the fictional Styles, Chimneys, Stoneygates and the other houses in her stories are mostly Abney in various forms."[2]
In 1971 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Agatha Christie died on 12 January 1976, at age 85, from natural causes, at Winterbrook House in the north of Cholsey parish, adjoining Wallingford in Oxfordshire (formerly Berkshire). She is buried in the nearby St Mary's Churchyard in Cholsey.
Christie's only child, Rosalind Hicks, died on 28 October 2004, also aged 85, from natural causes. Christie's grandson, Mathew Prichard, now owns the copyright to his grandmother's works.
Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple
Agatha Christie's first novel ''The Mysterious Affair at Styles'' was published in 1920 and introduced the long-running character detective Hercule Poirot, who appeared in 30 of Christie's novels and 50 short stories.
Her other well known character, Miss Marple, was introduced in ''The Murder at the Vicarage'' in 1930, and was based on Christie's grandmother.
During World War II, Christie wrote two novels intended as the last cases of these two great detectives, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, respectively. They were ''Curtain'', in which Poirot is killed, and ''Sleeping Murder''. Both books were sealed in a bank vault for over thirty years, and were released for publication by Christie only at the end of her life, when she realised that she could not write any more novels. These publications came on the heels of the success of the film version of ''Murder on the Orient Express'' in 1974.
Like Arthur Conan Doyle, Christie was to become increasingly tired of her detective, Poirot. In fact, by the end of the 1930s, Christie confided to her diary that she was finding Poirot “insufferableâ€, and by the 1960s she felt that he was an "an ego-centric creep". However, unlike Conan Doyle, Christie resisted the temptation to kill her detective off while he was still popular. She saw herself as an entertainer whose job was to produce what the public liked, and what the public liked was Poirot.
In contrast, Christie was fond of Miss Marple. However it is interesting to note that the Belgian detective’s titles outnumber the Marple titles by more than two to one.
Poirot is the only fictional character to have been given an obituary in ''The New York Times'', following the publication of ''Curtain'' in 1975.
Following the great success of ''Curtain'', Christie gave permission for the release of ''Sleeping Murder'' sometime in 1976, but died in January 1976 before the book could be released. This may explain some of the inconsistencies in the book with the rest of the Marple series — for example, Colonel Arthur Bantry, husband of Miss Marple's friend, Dolly, is still alive and well in ''Sleeping Murder'' (which, like ''Curtain'', was written in the 1940s) despite the fact he is noted as having died in books that were written after but published before the posthumous release of ''Sleeping Murder'' in 1976—such as, ''The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side''. It may be that Christie simply did not have time to revise the manuscript before she died. Miss Marple fared better than Poirot, since after solving the mystery in ''Sleeping Murder'', she returns home to her regular life in Saint Mary Mead.
On an edition of Desert Island Discs in 2007, Brian Aldiss recounted how Agatha Christie told him that she wrote her books up to the last chapter, and then decided who the most unlikely suspect was. She would then go back and make the necessary changes to "frame" that person. [2]
In popular culture
Christie has been portrayed on a number of occasions in film and television.
★ The first occasion was the 1979 ''Agatha'' when ''Vanessa Redgrave'' played the part.
★ Hilda Gobbi played the part in a 1980 Hungarian film, ''Kojak Budapesten''.
★ Peggy Ashcroft played the part in a 1986 TV play, ''Murder by the Book'' in which Ian Holm appeared as ''Poirot''.
★ Esme Lambert played the part in the ''Unreasonable Doubt'' episode of The Dead Zone, transmitted on July 14, 2002.
★ Olivia Williams played the part in a BBC television programme entitled which, like ''Agatha'', revolved around the 1926 disappearance. It was transmitted on September 22, 2004.
★ Aya Sugimoto played the part in an episode of a Japanese television series called ''Hyakunin no Ijin'' in 2006.
★ On 10 August 2007, it was announced that Christie, played by actress Fenella Woolgar, would appear as a character in the 2008 season of the science fiction TV series ''Doctor Who''.
★ Michelle Trout will play the part in a US film, ''Lives and Deaths of the Poets'', which is due for release in 2009.
List of works
Novels
Collections of Short Stories
★ 1924 ''Poirot Investigates'' (short stories: eleven in the UK, fourteen in the US)
★ 1929 ''Partners in Crime'' (fifteen short stories; featuring Tommy and Tuppence)
★ 1930 ''The Mysterious Mr. Quin'' (twelve short stories; introducing Mr. Harley Quin)
★ 1932 ''The Thirteen Problems'' (thirteen short mysteries; featuring Miss Marple, also known as ''The Tuesday Club Murders'')
★ 1933 ''The Hound of Death'' (twelve short mysteries - UK only)
★ 1934 ''The Listerdale mystery'' (twelve short mysteries - UK only)
★ 1934 ''Parker Pyne Investigates'' (twelve short mysteries; introducing Parker Pyne and Ariadne Oliver, also known as ''Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective'')
★ 1937 ''Murder in the Mews'' (four short stories; featuring Hercule Poirot, also known as ''Dead Man's Mirror'')
★ 1939 ''Regatta Mystery and Other Stories'' (nine short stories - US only)
★ 1947 ''The Labours of Hercules'' (twelve short mysteries; featuring Hercule Poirot)
★ 1948 ''The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories'' (eleven short stories - US only)
★ 1950 ''Three Blind Mice and Other Stories'' (nine short stories - US only)
★ 1951 ''The Under Dog and Other Stories'' (nine short stories - US only)
★ 1960 ''The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding'' (six short stories - UK only)
★ 1961 ''Double Sin and Other Stories'' (eight short stories - US only)
★ 1971 ''The Golden Ball and Other Stories'' (fifteen short stories - US only)
★ 1974 ''Poirot's Early Cases'' (eighteen short mysteries)
★ 1979 ''Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories'' (eight short stories - UK only)
★ 1991 ''Problem at Pollensa Bay and Other Stories'' (eight short stories - UK only)
★ 1997 ''The Harlequin Tea Set'' (nine short stories - US only)
★ 1997 ''While the Light Lasts and Other Stories'' (nine short stories - UK only)
Co-authored works
★ 1930 ''Behind The Screen'' written together with Hugh Walpole, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, E. C. Bentley and Ronald Knox of the Detection Club. Published in 1983 in ''The Scoop and Behind The Screen''.
★ 1931 ''The Scoop'' written together with Dorothy L. Sayers, E. C. Bentley, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts and Clemence Dane of the Detection Club. Published in 1983 in ''The Scoop and Behind The Screen''.
★ 1931 ''The Floating Admiral'' written together with G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers and certain other members of the Detection Club.
Plays adapted into novels by Charles Osborne
★ 1998 ''Black Coffee''
★ 1999 ''The Unexpected Guest''
★ 2000 ''Spider's Web''
Works written as Mary Westmacott
★ 1930 ''Giant's Bread''
★ 1934 ''Unfinished Portrait''
★ 1944 ''Absent in the Spring''
★ 1948 ''The Rose and the Yew Tree''
★ 1952 ''A Daughter's a Daughter''
★ 1956 ''The Burden''
Plays
★ 1930 ''''Black Coffee''''
★ 1937 or 1939 ''A Daughter's a Daughter'' (never performed)
★ 1943 ''''And Then There Were None''''
★ 1945 ''Appointment with Death''
★ 1946 ''Murder on the Nile/Hidden Horizon''
★ 1951 ''The Hollow''
★ 1952 ''The Mousetrap''
★ 1953 ''Witness for the Prosecution''
★ 1954 ''Spider's Web''
★ 1958 ''''Verdict''''
★ 1958 ''The Unexpected Guest''
★ 1960 ''Go Back for Murder''
★ 1962 ''''Rule of Three''''
★ 1972 ''Fiddler's Three'' (originally written as ''Fiddler's Five''. Never published. The final play she wrote)
★ 1973 ''Aknaton'' (written in 1937)
Radio Plays
★ 1937 ''Yellow Iris''
★ 1947 ''Three Blind Mice'' Christie's celebrated stage play 'The Mousetrap' was based on this radio play.
★ 1948 ''Butter In a Lordly Dish''
★ 1960 ''Personal Call'' (A BBC Radio recording of this play is known to exist)
Television Plays
★ 1937 ''Wasp's Nest''
Nonfiction
★ 1946 ''Come Tell Me How You Live''
★ 1977 ''
Other published works
★ 1925 ''The Road of Dreams'' (Poetry)
★ 1965 ''Star Over Bethlehem and other stories'' (Christmas stories and poems for children)
★ 1973 ''Poems''
Other works based on Christie's books and plays
Plays adapted by other authors
★ 1928 ''Alibi'' (dramatized from her novel by Michael Morton)
★ 1936 ''Love from a Stranger (play)'' (dramatized by Frank Vosper from her short story ''Philomel Cottage'')
★ 1940 ''Peril at End House''(dramatized from her novel by Arnold Ridley)
★ 1949 ''Murder at the Vicarage'' (dramatized from her novel by Moie Charles and Barbara Toy)
★ 1956 ''Towards Zero'' (dramatized from her novel by Gerard Verner)
★ 1977 ''Murder at the Vicarage''(dramatized from her novel by Leslie Darbon)
★ 1981 ''Cards on the Table'' (dramatized from her novel by Leslie Darbon)
★ 1992 ''Problem at Pollensa Bay''
★ 1993 ''Murder is Easy''
★ 2005 ''And Then There Were None''
Movie Adaptions
★ 1928 ''The Passing of Mr. Quinn''
★ 1929 ''Die Abenteurer GmbH'' based on ''The Secret Adversary''
★ 1931 ''Alibi''
★ 1931 ''Black Coffee''
★ 1934 ''Lord Edgware Dies''
★ 1937 ''Love from a Stranger (Film)''
★ 1945 ''And Then There Were None''
★ 1947 ''Love from a Stranger (Film)''
★ 1957 ''Witness for the Prosecution''
★ 1960 ''The Spider's Web''
★ 1962 ''Murder, She Said'' (Based on 4.50 From Paddington)
★ 1963 ''Murder at the Gallop'' (Based on After the Funeral)
★ 1964 ''Murder Most Foul'' (Based on Mrs. McGinty's Dead)
★ 1964 ''Murder Ahoy!'' (An original movie not based on any of the books, though it borrows some of the elements of ''They Do It with Mirrors'')
★ 1966 ''Ten Little Indians''
★ 1966 ''The Alphabet Murders'' (Based on The ABC Murders)
★ 1972 ''Endless Night''
★ 1974 ''Murder on the Orient Express''
★ 1975 ''Ten Little Indians''
★ 1978 ''Death on the Nile''
★ 1980 ''The Mirror Crack'd''
★ 1982 ''Evil Under the Sun''
★ 1984 ''Ordeal by Innocence''
★ 1988 ''Appointment with Death''
★ 1987 ''Desyat Negrityat''(Ten Little Niggers)
★ 1989 ''Ten Little Indians''
Television Adaptations
★ 1938 ''Love from a Stranger (TV)''
★ 1947 ''Love from a Stranger (TV)''
★ 1949 ''Ten Little Indians''
★ 1959 ''Ten Little Indians''
★ 1970 ''Murder at the Vicarage''
★ 1980 ''Why Didn't They Ask Evans?''
★ 1982 ''Spider's Web''
★ 1982 ''The Seven Dials Mystery''
★ 1982 ''The Agatha Christie Hour''
★ 1982 ''Murder is Easy''
★ 1982 ''The Witness for the Prosecution''
★ 1983 ''The Secret Adversary''
★ 1983 ''Partners in Crime''
★ 1983 ''A Caribbean Mystery''
★ 1983 ''Sparkling Cyanide''
★ 1984 ''The Body in the Library''
★ 1985 ''Murder with Mirrors''
★ 1985 ''The Moving Finger''
★ 1985 ''A Murder Is Announced''
★ 1985 ''A Pocket Full of Rye''
★ 1985 ''Thirteen at Dinner''
★ 1986 ''Dead Man's Folly
★ 1986 ''Murder in Three Acts''
★ 1986 ''Murder at the Vicarage''
★ 1987 ''Sleeping Murder''
★ 1987 ''At Bertram's Hotel''
★ 1987 ''Nemesis''
★ 1987 ''4.50 from Paddington''
★ 1989 ''The Man in the Brown Suit''
★ 1989 ''A Caribbean Mystery''
★ 1991 ''They Do It with Mirrors''
★ 1992 ''The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side''
★ 1997 ''The Pale Horse''
★ 2001 ''Murder on the Orient Express''
★ 2003 ''Sparkling Cyanide''
★ 2004 ''The Body in the Library''
★ 2004 ''Murder at the Vicarage''
★ 2004 ''Appointment with Death''
★ 2005 ''A Murder is Announced''
★ 2005 ''Sleeping Murder''
★ 2006 ''The Moving Finger''
★ 2006 ''By the Pricking of My Thumbs''
★ 2006 ''The Sittaford Mystery''
★ 2007 ''Hercule Poirot's Christmas'' (A French film adaptation)
★ 2007 ''Towards Zero
★ 2007 ''Nemesis
★ 2007 ''At Bertram's Hotel
★ 2007 ''Ordeal by Innocence
'''Agatha Christie's Poirot'' television series'
Episodes include:
★ 1990 ''Peril at End House''
★ 1990 ''The Mysterious Affair at Styles''
★ 1994 ''Hercule Poirot's Christmas''
★ 1995 ''Murder on the Links''
★ 1995 ''Hickory Dickory Dock''
★ 1996 ''Dumb Witness''
★ 2000 ''The Murder of Roger Ackroyd''
★ 2000 ''Lord Edgware Dies''
★ 2001 ''Evil Under the Sun''
★ 2001 ''Murder in Mesopotamia''
★ 2004 ''Five Little Pigs''
★ 2004 ''Death on the Nile''
★ 2004 ''Sad Cypress''
★ 2004 ''The Hollow''
★ 2005 ''The Mystery of the Blue Train''
★ 2005 ''Cards on the Table''
★ 2005 ''Taken at the Flood''
★ 2006 ''After the Funeral''
Comics
HarperCollins began issuing a series of comic strip adaptations of Christie's work on July 16 2007.
★ 2007 ''Murder on the Orient Express'' Adapted by Francois Riviere, Illustrated by Solidor (Jean-François Miniac).
★ 2007 ''Murder on the Links'' Adapted by Francois Riviere, Illustrated by Marc Piskic
★ 2007 ''Death on the Nile'' Adapted by Francois Riviere, Illustrated by Solidor ( Jean-François Miniac).
★ 2007 ''The Mystery of the Blue Train'' Adapted and illustrated by Marc Piskic
★ 2007 ''The Murder of Roger Ackroyd'' Adapted and illustrated by Bruno Lachard
★ 2007 ''The Secret of Chimneys'' Adapted by Francois Riviere, Illustrated by Laurence Suhner
Video games
★ 1988 ''The Scoop'' (published by Spinnaker Software and Telarium)
★ 2005 ''
★ 2006 ''
★ 2007 ''Death on the Nile'' "I-Spy" hidden-object game
★ 2007 '' (announced)''
Unpublished material
★ Eugenia and Eugenics (stage play)
★ Snow Upon the Desert (romantic novel)
★ The Greenshore Folly (detective novella, featuring Hercule Poirot, expanded into the novel Dead Man's Folly)
★ Personal Call (supernatural radio play, featuring Inspector Narracott - a recording is in the British National Sound Archive)
★ The Woman and the Kenite (horror) An Italian translation is available on the internet La moglie del Kenita
★ Butter in a Lordly Dish (horror/detective radio play, adapted from The Woman and the Kenite)
★ The Green Gate (supernatural)
★ The War Bride (romantic/supernatural)
★ The Case of the Dog's Ball (short story, featuring Poirot, expanded to the novel Dumb Witness and related to the short story How Does your Garden Grow?)
★ Stronger than Death (supernatural)
★ Being So Very Wilful (romantic)
★ The Last Seance (stage play)
★ Someone at the Window (detective stage play, adapted from the short story The Dead Harlequin)
Animation
In 2004, the Japanese broadcasting company Nippon Housou Kyoukai turned Poirot and Marple into animated characters in the anime series ''Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple'', introducing Mabel West (daughter of Miss Marple's mystery-writer nephew Raymond West, a canonical Christie character) and her duck Oliver as new characters.
See also
★ Plot devices in Agatha Christie's novels
★ '' (Her life story in a 2004 BBC drama)
★ Abney Hall (home to her brother-in-law; two books were penned there)
References
1. [1]
2. Agatha Christie: A Readers Companion - Vanessa Wagstaff and Stephen Poole, Aurum Press Ltd. 2004. Page 14. ISBN 1 84513 015 4.
Further reading
★ Barnard, Robert. ''A Talent to Deceive - An Appreciation of Agatha Christie''. London : Collins, 1980; New York: Mysterious Press, 1987.
★ Knepper, Marty S. "The Curtain Falls: Agatha Christie's Last Novels." ''CLUES: A Journal of Detection'' 23.4 (Summer 2005): 69-84
External links
★ Official Agatha Christie site
★ AgathaChristie.net - unofficial Christie website
★ Agatha Christie profile and articles at "The Guardian"
★ Agatha Christie profile on PBS.ORG
★ "Biography of an Author"
★ The Disappearance of Agatha Christie in 1926
★
★ The Agatha Christie Appreciation League
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