24 February 2013 - AGATHA CHRISTIE - Special Guest

AGATHA

DOB: Sep 15, 1890 - Died: Jan 12, 1976

 

CHRISTIE

- Special Guest -

G'day guys,

Today I have a well known name - Agatha Christie.  Agatha Christie is reputably known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. The Guinness Book of Records cites her as the second best selling author of all time after William Shakespeare. She also has the honor of being the most widely translated author. Her books have been translated in more than 103 languages.

She was born in Torquay, Devon, England. She did not receive any formal schooling, but did not lack education either. She taught herself to read from a very young age. During the First World War, she worked as a nurse at a hospital she also met her husband, Archibald Christie. In that period, she also started writing books.
 
The Mysterious Affair at Styles marked the inception of her crime fictional writing career and also gave the world one of the most enticing characters in literature – Hercule Poirot, a retired Belgian police man with an egg shaped head and black moustache. Poirot features as the detective in most of her novels. However, Murder at the Vicarage introduced an elderly spinster lady, Jane Marple in the quaint English village of St Mary Mead who had a deep understanding of human nature; teamed with her inquisitiveness that led to solving many mysteries with intense concentration and intuition. 

Eventually Christie became the unacknowledged Queen of Crime Fiction. During her life span, she wrote more than 66 novels, several short stories and screenplays and also a number of romantic movies using the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Numerous novels of her were made into motion pictures, the most famous being Murder on the Orient Express in 1974.
 
Apparently, there was a strong impact of writing on the author as well; hence on the 8th of December she just vanished. There was wide speculation that she had been murdered, but after some time her abandoned car was found near a lake. There was immense suspense for a lot of days, but finally she was discovered at the Hydropathic spa hotel in Harrowgate, where she was residing under a different name. This incident bore uncanny resemblance to a scene from her novel. It was later adapted into a book, “Eleven Missing Days” by Jared Cade. Similarly, there was another novel, “Agatha” written by Kathleen Tynan which was made into a major motion picture.

 Some of Christie’s best-known works are The ABC Murders (1936), And Then There Were None [also known as Ten Little Indians] (1945), The Mousetrap (longest ever running stage play in London, first performed in 1952), Hickory Dickory Dock (1955),Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and Death on the Nile (1978).
In 1971 Agatha Christie was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died on 12th January 1976. 

Clancy's comment: Back in the 1970's I visited the very town in which she was born. It was, and I guess it still is, a great place to write. 


Well done, Agatha Christie. Your name lives on. Pax vobiscum.

I'm ...

Blog comment:

Australian Fantasy Adventures has left a new comment on your post "24 February 2013 - AGATHA CHRISTIE - Special Guest...":

She was always one of my favorites. My father introduced me to 'And Then There were None,' back in HS, and I couldn't get enough. She was quite the inspiration to women writers. Thanks for the post, Clancy!
Best,
Jeanne