Agatha Christie

Facts

Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was born on 15 September 1890 in Torquay and died on 12 January 1976 in Wallingford, after a short cold in her home. She died at the age of 85. Agatha Christie was a British author, who wrote books in the murder mystery, thriller, crime fiction, detective and romance genres. Christie was very productive and wrote about eighty detective novels and short story collections, and often wrote two or three every year. She also published novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.

Agatha Christie was born with the name Agatha Miller, in a rich upper middle-class family in Ashfield, Torquay. Her father was American and her mother was British. She grew up in England, because she never applied for American citizenship. Christie was always surrounded by strong and independent women when she was little, and therefore, she described her childhood as "very happy". She got home education by her parents, who taught her to read and to write. They also taught her about music, and she learned to play piano and mandolin.

In her childhood, Agatha spent a lot of time alone and separated from other children. She spent much time with her pets and she was a reader from an early age.

In 1912 Christie met the aviator Archibald Christie and both of them were desperate to marry each other. After they both experienced war, Archibald in France and Agatha at home, they married on Christmas Eve 1914. It was in this marriage Agatha had her only daughter, named Rosalind. The marriage was unhappy and they divorced 1928.

During the First World War she worked in a hospital and later in a pharmacy, where she learned about poisons, something she later would use in her books.

Authorship

Agatha Christie has over 2.5 million sold books in English and 1.5 million sold books in 103 other languages. She is the world's bestselling author after William Shakespeare. Her career as an author started in 1920 and ended in 1976 so she had a long career. Her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was well received but it wasn't a bestseller.

The book which she had the most success with was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It was first published in June 1926. The genre of the book is crime novel and in 2013, 87 years after it was released, it was voted as the best crime novel ever by the British Crime Writers Association. The main character in the book is Hercule Poirot.

The years from 1934 to 1941 are sometimes known as "Christie's golden years", during this time she wrote for example And then there were none. That book is the most sold detective story in the world with 115 million sold copies. During the second world war, after "Christie's golden years", Miss Marple was the main character in a pair of novels. Most of Christie's novels took place in either an upper class family or during a trip. Neither the persons or the environment in the books are described very well, but Christie had a secret motive and that was: when the readers themselves have to fill in the details in the books the characters get more alive.

Sources:

 Wikipedia - Agatha Christie (swedish) 20.2.2017

Wikipedia - Agatha Christie (english) 20.2.2017 

Offical website - Agatha Christie 21.2.2017 

Wikipedia - The murder of Roger Ackroyd 20.2.2017 

Text: Madeleine Södergård och Sandra Skinnars