Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is the world's best-known mystery writer. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language She is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare.
Agatha Miller was born in Torquay, England on September 15, 1890. The youngest of three children in a conservative, well-to-do family. Taught at home by a governess and tutors, as a child Agatha never attended school. She became adept at creating games to keep herself occupied at a very young age. A shy child, unable to adequately express her feelings, she first turned to music as a means of expression and, later in life, to writing. In a writing career that spanned more than half a century, Agatha Christie wrote 79 novels and short story collections. She also wrote over a dozen plays including The Mousetrap, which opened in London on November 25, 1952, and is now the longest continuously-running play in theatrical history.
In 1914, at the age of 24, she married Archie Christie, a World War I
fighter pilot. While he was off at war, she worked as a nurse. It was while
working in a hospital during the war that Christie first came up with the
idea of writing a detective novel. Although it was completed in a year, it wasn't published until 1920, five years later.
Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) was also the first to feature her eccentric Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Surely one of the most famous fictional creations of all time. Her last published novel, Sleeping Murder (1976) featured her other world-famous sleuth, the shrewdly inquisitive Miss Jane Marple of St. Mary Mead.
In 1926, Archie asked for a divorce, having fallen in love with another
woman. Agatha, already upset by the recent death of her mother, disappeared.
All of England became wrapped up in the case of the now famous missing
writer. She was found three weeks later in a small hotel, explaining to
police that she had lost her memory. Thereafter, it was never again
mentioned or elaborated upon by Christie.
She later found happiness with her marriage in 1930 to Max Mallowan, a young
archaeologist who she met on a trip to Mesopotamia.
Agatha Christie also wrote six romantic novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. She wrote nonfiction as well-- four books including an autobiography and an entertaining account of the many archeological expeditions she shared with her second husband, Sir Max Mallowan. In 1971, she achieved her country's highest honor when she received the Order of Dame Commander of the British Empire. Agatha Christie died on January 12, 1976.
Several of her works were made into successful feature films, the most notable being Murder on the Orient Express (1974)..
In 1971 she was awarded the high honor of becoming a Dame of the British Empire.