Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, in the United Kingdom. She was the daughter of a wealthy American stockbroker, who died when she was only eleven, years old. Her mother taught her at home, encouraging her to write at a very young age.
When she was 16, she went to finishing school, in Paris to study singing and piano. In 1914, at age 24, she married, Colonel, Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. White he went away to war, she worked as a nurse and wrote her first novel, ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles” (1920), which wasn’t published until four years later. After her husband came back from the war, they had a daughter. However, in 1928, she divorced him and married Sir Max Mallowan, an archaeologist. She travelled, with him to various digs and several of her novels were set in the Middle East. Most of her other novels, though, were set in a fictionalised, Devon.
Christie and her characters, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, have become icons of “whodunnit” detective fiction. She is said to be the best-selling novelist of all time, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, with her novels exceeding 2 billion copies by way of sales and having been translated into more than a hundred different languages.
Many of her works have been adapted to film, most notably “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974). Her short stories, plays, and novels have also been adapted to television, radio, and at least one video game (“And Then There Were None”, 2005). In addition, Christie boasts the Longest running play in the world: ‘The Mousetrap”, which she originally wrote as a birthday gift for Queen Mary. Christie received numerous honours during her Lifetime, including the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, (1955) and, the order of Dame Commander of the British Empire (1971).
She is credited with developing the “vintage style” of mystery, which became popular and, ultimately defined, the Golden Age of fiction in England, in the 1920s and ’30s, an age of which she is considered to have been Queen. In all, she wrote over 66 novels, numerous short stories and screenplays. She also wrote a series of romantic novels under the pen name Mary Westmarott, Indeed, she is still considered by many as one of the most popular mystery writers of all time.
This writer grew up reading those edge-of-the-seat mysteries that were solved by Christie’s fictional sleuths Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and hopes that you too will enjoy following their adventures!
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