Agatha Christie: Queen of Mystery
Mary Clarissa Agatha Miller, later known as Agatha Christie, was born on September 15, 1890 at Torquay in the United Kingdom. Her mother was the daughter of a British army officer and her father was a New York stockbroker. She also had two older siblings: Louis and Margaret. Since she was homeschooled, she taught herself to read at the age of five. She attended the Mussi Guyer Girls’ School, but was then sent to France to finish her education in Paris.
In 1914, she married Colonel Archibald Christie, a member of the Royal Flying Corps. She wrote her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert, which was set in Cairo. The novel was rejected by all the publishers she sent it to. During this time, she wrote numerous short stories, including “The House of Beauty” and “The Little Lonely God.” These early stories were not published until decades later and were all submitted under different pseudonyms.
When Archibald was fighting in France during the First World War, she became involved with the war effort at home where she worked as a nurse. There, she began writing detective fiction and began her debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which was published in 1920. This novel introduced one of her most famous characters: Hercule Poirot, a former Belgian police officer who fled to England when it was invaded.
By 1926, she released The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which is considered one of her best works. The same year, her mother died, and her husband told her that he wanted to leave her because he found someone else. On December 3, she disappeared. After almost two weeks, she was found at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel, registered under her husband’s mistress’ name. To this day, the reasons for her disappearance remain unknown. It was suspected that she was either trying to frame her husband or it was merely a publicity stunt.
She and Archibald divorced in 1928 and by 1930, she married Max Mallowan, an archaeology professor. That same year, she started writing the pen name of Mary Westmacott. She published Giant’s Bread, the first of her six romances. She also published Murder at the Vicarage, which first introduced the character of Jane Marple. Though she preferred writing about Miss Marple, the character did not take off as quickly as Poirot did. Some of her most well-known books were published in the 1930s, including Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None.
When the Second World War broke out, she split her time between writing and working at a pharmacy at University College Hospital in London. Working at the pharmacy ended up benefiting her as she learned more about chemical compounds and poison. She continued writing and by the 1950s, she was reportedly earning £100,000 per year. In 1952, she published one of her most famous plays, The Mousetrap. It has been running on the West End in London since 1952.
Christie’s health began to decline, and she died of natural causes on January 12, 1976. Over her lifetime, she wrote 66 crime novels, 6 romance novels, 24 plays, and over 150 short stories. Today, she is the best-selling novelist in history, with her books being outsold only by the Bible and William Shakespeare.
Citations:
Agatha Christie | Biography, Books and Facts. Famous Authors . (2020). https://www.famousauthors.org/agatha-christie.
Goodall, R. (2020, November 10). 100 years of Agatha Christie: a retrospective on the Queen of Crime. The Boar. https://theboar.org/2020/11/100-years-of-agatha-christie/.
Robinson, J. (2021, June 4). Inside The Mind Of Agatha Christie. KPBS Public Media. https://www.kpbs.org/news/2021/jan/13/inside-mind-agatha-christie/.
