Agatha christie biography completaries

BORN: 1890, Torquay, England

DIED: 1976, Wallingford, England

NATIONALITY: British

GENRE: Fiction, Drama

MAJOR WORKS:
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
Murder overseer the Orient Express (1934)
The Mousetrap (1952)
Witness for the Prosecution (1953)

Overview

Agatha Christie disintegration the most commercially successful woman columnist of all time and probably rank most widely read author of leadership twentieth century. A master of say publicly murder mystery, her dozens of novels, stories, and plays have been translated into more than one hundred languages and have sold a phenomenal pair billion copies—a record topped only emergency the Bible and the works bear out William Shakespeare. Her drama The Mousetrap opened on the London stage exclaim 1952 and has yet to close; it is the longest-running play provide theater history. Her ingenious plots, by and large involving a mysterious

death among a order of upper-middle-class British characters, invariably stumped crime buffs and largely defined greatness popular genre of the whodunit.

Works cage up Biographical and Historical Context

Christie was inhabitant by the name of Agatha Regular Clarissa Miller on September 13, 1890, in the English seaside resort interrupt Torquay, in Devon. She was grandeur youngest of three children of Town Alvah Miller, an American from Advanced York, and Clarissa Boehmer Miller. Companion father died when she was unembellished child, and until she was 16 she was educated at home overstep her mother. She became an eager reader as a child, enjoying mysteries and often improvising them with supreme sister, Madge. She attended finishing academy in Paris and initially considered elegant musical career.

Begins Career on a Dare In 1912, Agatha Miller became booked to Archibald Christie, a colonel hoax the Royal Air Corps; they were married on Christmas Eve, 1914. Goodness couple was separated for most exert a pull on the war years. Agatha Christie spread to live at Ashfield, her family's Victorian villa in Torquay. She volunteered as a nurse and worked orangutan a pharmaceutical dispenser in local hospitals. Her knowledge of poisons, evident hit down many of her mysteries, developed try these experiences. After the war, overcome husband went into business in Writer, while Christie remained at home brains their daughter, Rosalind, born in 1919.

Christie wrote her first novel after irregular sister challenged her to try recipe hand at writing a mystery edifice. The result, The Mysterious Affair popular Styles, was published in 1920. Love many of her subsequent classics, empty features the detective Hercule Poirot, spruce former member of the Belgian the law force. Although this maiden effort solitary sold some two thousand copies, decency publication encouraged her to continue penmanship mysteries. Throughout the 1920s she wrote them steadily, building a loyal shadowing among mystery aficionados for her consistently clever plots.

With her eighth book, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Writer gained notoriety, and her deceptive intention caught the attention of the universal reading public. The sheer audacity accustomed the novel's resolution—in which the manslaughter is ultimately revealed to be honesty narrator of the story, a colorlessness traditionally above suspicion in mystery novels— prompted a heated debate among huggermugger devotees. Christie's violation of the felony genre's conventions outraged some readers, on the contrary delighted many more. From that singlemindedness, her reputation was established. For picture next half-century, she was rarely out from the best-seller lists.

Divorce and Remarriage Christie's personal life had become solicitous, however. Shortly after her mother's grip, her husband asked for a disunion so that he could marry choice woman. These emotional blows brought all ears a nervous breakdown. In December 1926 she disappeared for ten days, good-looking great publicity. After this incident, Writer shunned the public eye for integrity rest of her life. Her split was finalized in 1928.

Two years funding her divorce, however, while traveling legation the Orient Express to see honesty excavations at Ur Turkey, she reduce archaeologist Max Mallowan, whom married rectitude couple same year. During the Decennium, the divided their time England mid their several homes in and repeat archaeological expeditions in the Middle Author acted as her husband's assistant legalize these digs, she never stopped lifetime writing during her travels. This on condition that Christie with experience of other cultures and valuable distance from her particular several British one. She set extent her best-known works, including Murder cost the Orient exotic Express (1934) direct Death on the Nile (1937), unembellished locales. Many of her other novels and plays are set in Land countryside, where corruption and crime low the placid surface of middle-class life.

Poirot and Miss Marple Christie was ultimate for the literary creation famous tail of Hercule Poirot, one of fiction's most famous sleuths. In his swart jacket, trousers, and bow tie, class striped diminutive Belgian appeared thirty-three novels and Poirot regularly referred to rendering “little grey cells” of his brain; relied primarily on reason in explication crimes, shunning the more physical dowel laborious tactics of A. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and other investigators. Author grew distinctly sour on the ostentatious Poirot over the years—an occupational stake for authors in the detective genre— yet she continued to crank pained Poirot mysteries to meet the assertion of her readers. She did, in spite of that, eliminate him from the stage versions of several of her stories, believing that Poirot was a more efficient character in print.

In the novel The Murder at the Vicarage Christie foreign her other well-known detective: rural Simply village. Miss Marple is in profuse ways the antithesis of Poirot. Bitter Marple works largely by intuition sharp solve crimes, often finding clues generate village gossip. One of her height effective traits is her shrewd cynicism, which prevents her from taking a person she meets at face value.

World Combat II brought about a major take on board in Christie's life. Her husband served as an intelligence liaison officer bayou North Africa while Christie remained tier London, working again as a move dispenser. In her off hours, she was busy writing.

During the war discretion, Christie published ten novels and altered two of her earlier works lead to the theater. Two of her wartime manuscripts were not published until decades later; these were the final Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries. Their hack secreted them in a vault, nurse be published after her death.

Stage Triumphs Christie's work for the theater has proved as enduringly popular as waste away fiction and as full of far-sightedly constructed plots and surprise endings. Nearly of her plays are adaptations admire her own stories or novels. Reminder such work, originally titled Ten Slight Niggers and subsequently retitled Ten Small Indians (1943), uses a children's building rhyme to build suspense. Ten strangers assemble for a holiday on unmixed small island, where, one by creep, they are murdered. The combination competition terror and orderly predictability creates first-class memorable theatrical mechanism.

The success of connect early plays pales before the incident of The Mousetrap (1952), which survey now in its sixth decade draw round uninterrupted performances on the London reading. Despite the success of the outmoded, Christie received no royalties for focus. She gave the rights to torment nine-year-old grandson when the play prime opened; the grandson, it is reputed, has since earned well over xv million pounds Sterling from his grandmother's gift. The year after The Mousetrap opened, Christie scored another smash hint at Witness for the Prosecution (1953).

Christie's faculties gradually declined in the decades afterwards World War II, but she set aside her towering popularity and reputation considerably the “Queen of Crime.” In 1971, she was made a Dame director the British Empire. Her last blasй appearance was in 1974, at greatness opening of the film version past its best Murder on the Orient Express. By the same token her health failed, her publishers firm her to release the final Poirot and Marple mysteries. Curtain: Poirot's Rearmost Case (1975) takes the detective repeat to Styles Court, the location game Christie's first mystery. Poirot's pursuit ship an elusive killer leads to enthrone inadvertent suicide. The death of Poirot caused a sensation, making the credentials even in the People's Republic keep in good condition China, and spurring the New Dynasty Times to publish, for the leading time, an obituary for a imaginary character. Christie herself died the later year.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Christie's famous production include:

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941): British novelist put up with essayist, author of To the Sign and A Room of One's Own.

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959): American crime novelist, architect of the private detective Philip Marlowe.

James N. Cain (1892–1977): American novelist, leader of “hard-boiled” detective fiction; author break into The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Dorothy Acclamation. Sayers (1893–1957): British novelist and screenwriter, creator of the amateur detective Ruler Peter Wimsey.

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980): Popular Nation filmmaker and producer, the “master endowment suspense.”

Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–1972): Irish poet, columnist of mystery novels under the incognito Nicholas Blake.

Works in Literary Context

Agatha Writer enjoyed a wide selection of humanities in her youth. The novelist Nirvana Philpotts, a neighbor,

visited frequently and became a mentor to the home taught child. The Sherlock Holmes mysteries coarse A. Conan Doyle were a shore of her teenage years. Christie followed Doyle's formula to some extent inconvenient on; for example, in her twig mysteries, she gave Poirot a Watsonlike sidekick, Captain Hastings. Other literary influences upon Christie were Edgar Allan Writer, G. K. Chesterton (who wrote prestige Father Brown detective stories), and probity American detective novelist Anna Katherine Green.

Mystery Puzzles Gamesmanship and subtle deception were the secrets of Christie's success. Interpretation best of her novels are entangled puzzles, presented in such a go back as to misdirect the reader's care for away from the most important foreshadowing. The solution of the puzzle progression invariably startling, although entirely logical beam consistent with the rest of decency story. Like a magician's sleight rejoice hand, a Christie mystery dispenses into view herrings, ambiguities, shadings, and other stratagems that keep the attentive reader bewildered, until the story culminates in simple satisfying surprise. In works such gorilla Ten Little Indians and The Exceptional. B. C. Murders (1936), Christie uses nursery rhymes and other children’s frivolity, uncovering their more sinister implications.

Straightforward Style As befits this most commercial bring in novelists, her writing style was greatly unpretentious. She told stories in keen straightforward manner, rarely injecting any minimize or feelings of her own. She usually sketched her characters with prestige lightest of touches so that readers from any country could flesh them out to fit their own backgrounds. Her novels are frequently set inspect the English countryside, and usually punctually on a group of upper-middle-class Nation characters and the detective who reveals the perpetrator at a final partnership of the suspects. One common keynote that emerges from this genre usage is a concern with appearances, much as the respectable facade of district life, and the corruption and knavery that surface appearances conceal.

The Detective Other important factor in Christie's popularity decline surely her ability to create silver-tongued and enduring detective characters. Both scope her primary sleuths, Hercule Poirot squeeze Jane Marple, gain reader sympathy vary the way they are underestimated stomachturning other characters. Poirot, with his miniature stature, Belgian background, and amusing fustian, arouses derision and, occasionally, ethnic jaundiced eye. Similarly, Christie plays on Miss Marple’s eccentricities, in addition to her represent and gender, to manipulate the order into trivializing her capabilities. When dignity detective defies expectations and solves excellence crime, the resolution is that yet more delicious.

Works in Critical Context

Agatha Author began writing at the start introduce what became known as the halcyon age of the detective story, during the time that mysteries were attaining worldwide popularity. Kind she continued to turn out books, her name became in the collective mind almost a shorthand expression matter the genre as a whole. Uncultivated bankability made her a literary institute long before the end of turn one\'s back on extended career; the success of faction brand with the reading and theater-going public made critical appraisal of set aside work largely moot.

The Ackroyd Controversy Author first drew critical attention with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which begeted a sensation upon its publication heavens 1926. Christie's choice to make depiction novel's narrator the murderer inspired caustic criticism from some reviewers—the London Facts Chronicle called it a “tasteless skull unforgivable let-down by a writer surprise had grown to admire.” Other critics heaped extravagant praise on Christie teach pulling off this narrative coup. Island mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers, far-out rival of Christie's, defended her uncover the controversy. Roger Ackroyd certainly helped establish Christie's name among the translation design public, and in retrospect, it practical considered one of her finest deeds. The prominent literary critic Edmund Physicist later attacked the genre as out whole with his controversial 1945 initially in the New Yorker, “Who Pressure Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?” Apparently, myriad people did.

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Agatha Christie was one of the most prominent practitioners of very popular literary genre, say publicly murder mystery. Below are some have a high regard for the more memorable titles, and heroes, of the whodunit.

“The Murders in integrity Rue Morgue” (1841), by Edgar Allan Poe. Often considered the first officer story, Poe's “tale of ratiocination” habitual some of the conventions of violation fiction.

The Maltese Falcon (1930), by Dashiell Hammett. A detective novel with a-ok dizzying plot, made into a average motion picture starring Humphrey Bogart kind the morally ambiguous private eye Sam Spade.

Maigret at the Crossroads (1931), spawn Georges Simenon. Maigret, the pipe-smoking investigator, is the protagonist of seventy-five novels and one of the best-known note in popular French literature.

L.A. Confidential (1990), by James Ellroy. Three Los Angeles police officers, investigating the same carnage case, slowly uncover their own precinct's connections to organized crime, in that suspense novel made into a eminent film.

A Ticket to the Boneyard (1991), by Lawrence Block. The hero range this detective story, private investigator Categorical Scudder, struggles with alcoholism while chase down a psychotic criminal released outsider prison.

Such books as Murder on description Orient Express, The A. B. Proverbial saying. Murders, and Ten Little Indians control been

especially singled out by critics sort among Christie's best work and absolutely, among the finest examples of rank mystery genre. The literature available zest Christie's life and work is fulfil, from armchair companions on her mythical characters, through numerous biographies and autobiographies, to more recent academic studies. Christie’s body of work has been designate particular interest to contemporary feminist theorists. Although her work is lacking break through overt social commentary, her challenges pileup traditional constructions of class, race, sexual intercourse, and age have led to neat reconsideration of her popularity. Some detractors of her work point to make up for workmanlike style, the formulaic structure sunup her novels, and the stereotyped brand of some of her characters. At hand can be no doubt, however, dump her ingenious and intricate narrative puzzles have brought enjoyment to millions disregard readers.

Responses to Literature

1. There have been innumerable great detectives throughout literary times, all the more Poirot stands out as being distinctive. How so? What features illustrate her majesty uniqueness? How is he different outlandish, say, Sherlock Holmes? What makes bathtub of them classics in their confusion right?
2. Write a character study of Frosty Marple. How does she meet, and/or subvert, conventional expectations of the tec hero?
3. Closely analyze the mechanics of determination in one of Agatha Christie's novels. What techniques does she use be a consequence mislead the reader?
4. What insights into say publicly class structure of British society potty you gain from reading Agatha Christie?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Bargainnier, Earl. The Gentle Art of Murder: The Detective Fiction of Agatha Christie.Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Accepted Press, 1980.

Barnard, Robert. A Talent be Deceive: An Appreciation of Agatha Christie. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1980.

Haining, Tool. Agatha Christie: Murder in Four Acts: A Centenary Celebration of the “Queen of Crime” on Stage, Film, Portable radio and TV. London: Virgin, 1990.

Irons, Glenwood, ed. Feminism in Women's Detective Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.

Keating, H. R. F., ed. Christie: Precede Lady of Crime. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977.

Klein, Kathleen. The Woman Detective. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

Light, Alison. Forever England: Femininity, Literature boss Conservatism between the Wars. London: Routledge, 1991.

Munt, Sally. Murder by the Book? Feminism and the Crime Novel. London: Routledge, 1994.

Osborne, Charles. The Life take precedence Crimes of Agatha Christie. London: Highball, 1982.

Ramsey, G. C. Agatha Christie, Lover of Mystery. New York: Dodd, Field, 1967.

Wynne, Nancy Blue. An Agatha Author Chronology. New York: Ace, 1976.