Agatha Christie

Born

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller , Torquay, Devon, England, UK

Birthday

1890-09-15

Occupation

Spouse(s)

Max E.L. Mallowan (11 September 1930 - 12 January 1976) (her death)
Archibald Christie (24 December 1914 - 1928) (divorced) (1 child)

Years Active

1919-1974

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English crime novelist, short story writer and playwright. She also wrote six romances under the name Mary Westmacott including Giant's Bread, but she is best known for the 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections that she wrote under her own name, most of which revolve around the investigative work of such characters as Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Parker Pyne, Ariadne Oliver, Harley Quin/Mr Satterthwaite and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. She wrote the world's longest-running play, a murder mystery, The Mousetrap. In 1971 she was made a Dame for her contribution to literature.

Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon. She served in a hospital during the First World War before marrying and starting a family in London. She was initially unsuccessful at getting her work published, but in 1920 The Bodley Head press published her novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring the character of Hercule Poirot. This launched her literary career.

The Guinness Book of World Records lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly 2 billion copies, and her estate claims that her works come third in the rankings of the world's most-widely published books, behind only Shakespeare's works and the Bible. According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author – having been translated into at least 103 languages. And Then There Were None is Christie's best-selling novel, with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery ever, and one of the best-selling books of all time.

Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run: it opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End on 25 November 1952 and as of 2015 is still running after more than 25,000 performances. In 1955 Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's highest honour, the Grand Master Award. Later the same year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award by the MWA for Best Play. In 2013, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 fellow writers of the Crime Writers' Association.

On 15 September 2015, coinciding with Christie's 125th birthday, And Then There Were None was voted as the "World's Favourite Christie", followed closely by Murder on the Orient Express and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Most of her books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics, and more than thirty feature films have been based on her work.

This page contains content from the Agatha Christie page on the English version of Wikipedia which is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and/or Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please refer to the list of authors in the page history. MoovieLive disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.