Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, in the United Kingdom, the daughter of a wealthy American stockbroker. Her father died when she was eleven years old. Her mother taught her at home, encouraging her to write at a very young age. At the age of 16, she went to Mrs. Dryden's 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. While 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. When her husband came back from the war, they had a daughter. In 1928 she divorced her husband, who had been having an affair. In 1930, she married Sir Max Mallowan, an archaeologist and a Catholic. She travelled with her husband's job, and set several of her novels set in the Middle East. Most of her other novels were set in a fictionalized Devon, where she was born.
Agatha Christie is credited with developing the "cozy style" of mystery, which became popular in, 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, and a series of romantic novels using the pen name Mary Westmacott. She was the single most popular mystery writer of all time. In 1971 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
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http://www.agathachristie.com/2,898 works Add another?
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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
85 editions - first published in 1926 -
And Then There Were None
78 editions - first published in 1940 -
Murder on the Orient Express
72 editions - first published in 1933 -
The ABC Murders
63 editions - first published in 1936 -
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
60 editions - first published in 1920 -
The Secret Adversary
57 editions - first published in 1922 -
4:50 from Paddington or What Mrs. McGillicuddy saw!
55 editions - first published in 1957Be first in line! -
Death on the Nile
54 editions - first published in 1937 -
Crooked House
52 editions - first published in 1949 -
At Bertram's Hotel
52 editions - first published in 1965Be first in line! -
Curtain: Poirot's last case
48 editions - first published in 1975Be first in line! -
Sparkling Cyanide
46 editions - first published in 1945 -
The Clocks
45 editions - first published in 1963 -
Mirror crack'd from side to side
45 editions - first published in 1960 -
Sleeping Murder
44 editions - first published in 1940 -
Peril at End House
44 editions - first published in 1932 -
Evil Under the Sun
43 editions - first published in 1941 -
A murder is announced
43 editions - first published in 1950Be first in line! -
Murder in Mesopotamia
43 editions - first published in 1936 -
Murder at the Vicarage
43 editions - first published in 1930
Agatha Christie
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Links (outside Open Library)
- VIAF: 71388952
- Wikidata: Q35064
- Wikipedia
- Agatha Christie 120
Alternative names
- Mary Westmacott
- Andrew Eames
- Westmacott Mary
- Agatha Christie
- Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976
- AGATHA CHRISTIE
May 2, 2019 | Edited by Lisa | merge authors |
March 3, 2018 | Edited by Ehrengardian | there is no evidence for her second husband having had many affairs; I've removed that |
December 20, 2017 | Edited by Tom Morris | merge authors |
May 18, 2017 | Edited by Clean Up Bot | merge authors |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | initial import |