Agatha Christie

Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan,(15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), well known as Agatha Christie, was an English crime fiction writer. She also wrote romance novels under the name Mary Westmacott, but is chiefly remembered for her 66 detective novels. Her work with these novels, particularly featuring detectives Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple, have given her the title the 'Queen of Crime' and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre.
Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, Devon, to an American father and an English mother. She never held or claimed United States citizenship. Her father was Frederick Miller, a rich American stockbroker, and her mother was Clara Boehmer, a British aristocrat. Christie had a sister, Margaret Frary Miller (1879–1950), called Madge, eleven years her senior, and a brother, Louis Montant Miller (1880–1929), called Monty, ten years older than Christie. Her father died when she was very young. Her mother resorted to teaching her at home, encouraging her to write at a very young age. Her first marriage, an unhappy one, was in 1914 to Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. The couple had one daughter, Rosalind Hicks, and divorced in 1928.
During World War I she worked at a hospital and then a pharmacy, a job that influenced her work; many of the murders in her books are carried out with poison.
On 8 December 1926, while living in Sunningdale in Berkshire, she disappeared for ten days, causing great interest in the press. Her car was found in a chalk pit in Newland's Corner, Surrey. She was eventually found staying at the Swan Hydro (now the Old Swan hotel) in Harrogate under the name of the woman with whom her husband had recently admitted to having an affair. She claimed to have suffered a nervous breakdown and a fugue state caused by the death of her mother and her husband's infidelity. Opinions are still divided as to whether this was a publicity stunt. Public sentiment at the time was negative, with many feeling that an alleged publicity stunt had cost the taxpayers a substantial amount of money.
In 1930, Christie married a Roman Catholic (despite her divorce and her Anglican faith), the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. Mallowan was 14 years younger than Christie, and his travels with her contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Their marriage was happy in the early years, and endured despite Mallowan's many affairs in later life, notably with Barbara Parker, whom he married in 1977, the year after Christie's death.
In 1971 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Agatha Christie died on 12 January 1976, at age 85, from natural causes, at Winterbrook House in the north of Cholsey parish, adjoining Wallingford in Oxfordshire (formerly Berkshire). She is buried in the nearby St Mary's Churchyard in Cholsey.
Christie's only child, Rosalind Hicks, died on 28 October 2004, also aged 85, from natural causes. Christie's grandson, Mathew Prichard, now owns the copyright to his grandmother's works.
Agatha Christie's first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in 1920 and introduced the long-running character detective Hercule Poirot, who appeared in 30 of Christie's novels and 50 short stories. Her other well known character, Miss Marple, was introduced in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930, and was based on Christie's grandmother.
During World War II, Christie wrote two novels intended as the last cases of these two great detectives, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, respectively. They were Curtain, in which Poirot is killed, and Sleeping Murder. Both books were sealed in a bank vault for over thirty years, and were released for publication by Christie only at the end of her life, when she realised that she could not write any more novels. These publications came on the heels of the success of the film version of Murder on the Orient Express in 1974.

Christie has been portrayed on a number of occasions in film and television.

• The first occasion was the 1979 Agatha when Vanessa Redgrave played the part.
• Hilda Gobbi played the part in a 1980 Hungarian film, Kojak Budapesten.
• Peggy Ashcroft played the part in a 1986 TV play, Murder by the Book in which Ian Holm appeared as Poirot.
• Esme Lambert played the part in the Unreasonable Doubt episode of The Dead Zone, transmitted on July 14, 2002.
• Olivia Williams played the part in a BBC television programme entitled Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures which, like Agatha, revolved around the 1926 disappearance. It was transmitted on September 22, 2004.
• Aya Sugimoto played the part in an episode of a Japanese television series called Hyakunin no Ijin in 2006.
• On 10 August 2007, it was announced that Christie, played by actress Fenella Woolgar, would appear as a character in the 2008 season of the science fiction TV series Doctor Who.
• Michelle Trout will play the part in a US film, Lives and Deaths of the Poets, which is due for release in 2009.

LIST OF WORKS

Novels

• 1924 Poirot Investigates
• 1929 Partners in Crime
• 1930 The Mysterious Mr. Quin
• 1932 The Thirteen Problems
• 1933 The Hound of Death
• 1934 The Listerdale mystery
• 1934 Parker Pyne Investigates
• 1937 Murder in the Mews
• 1939 Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
• 1947 The Labours of Hercules
• 1948 The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
• 1950 Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
• 1951 The Under Dog and Other Stories
• 1960 The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
• 1961 Double Sin and Other Stories
• 1971 The Golden Ball and Other Stories
• 1974 Poirot's Early Cases
• 1979 Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories
• 1991 Problem at Pollensa Bay and Other Stories
• 1997 The Harlequin Tea Set
• 1997 While the Light Lasts and Other Stories

Plays adapted into novels by Charles Osborne

• 1998 Black Coffee
• 1999 The Unexpected Guest
• 2000 Spider's Web

Works written as Mary Westmacott

• 1930 Giant's Bread
• 1934 Unfinished Portrait
• 1944 Absent in the Spring
• 1948 The Rose and the Yew Tree
• 1952 A Daughter's a Daughter
• 1956 The Burden

Plays

• 1930 Black Coffee
• 1937 or 1939 A Daughter's a Daughter (never performed)
• 1943 And Then There Were None
• 1945 Appointment with Death
• 1946 Murder on the Nile/Hidden Horizon
• 1951 The Hollow
• 1952 The Mousetrap
• 1953 Witness for the Prosecution
• 1954 Spider's Web
• 1958 Verdict
• 1958 The Unexpected Guest
• 1960 Go Back for Murder
• 1962 Rule of Three
• 1972 Fiddler's Three (originally written as Fiddler's Five. Never published. The final play she wrote)
• 1973 Aknaton

Radio Plays

• 1937 Yellow Iris
• 1947 Three Blind Mice Christie's.
• 1948 Butter In a Lordly Dish
• 1960 Personal Call

Television Plays

• 1937 Wasp's Nest

Nonfiction

• 1946 Come Tell Me How You Live
• 1977 Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

Other published works

• 1925 The Road of Dreams (Poetry)
• 1965 Star Over Bethlehem and other stories
• 1973 Poems

Movie Adaptions

• 1928 The Passing of Mr. Quinn
• 1929 Die Abenteurer GmbH based on The Secret Adversary
• 1931 Alibi
• 1931 Black Coffee
• 1934 Lord Edgware Dies
• 1937 Love from a Stranger (Film)
• 1945 And Then There Were None
• 1947 Love from a Stranger (Film)
• 1957 Witness for the Prosecution
• 1960 The Spider's Web
• 1962 Murder, She Said
• 1963 Murder at the Gallop
• 1964 Murder Most Foul
• 1964 Murder Ahoy!
• 1966 Ten Little Indians
• 1966 The Alphabet Murders
• 1972 Endless Night
• 1974 Murder on the Orient Express
• 1975 Ten Little Indians
• 1978 Death on the Nile
• 1980 The Mirror Crack'd
• 1982 Evil Under the Sun
• 1984 Ordeal by Innocence
• 1988 Appointment with Death
• 1987 Desyat Negrityat
• 1989 Ten Little Indians

Television Adaptations

• 1938 Love from a Stranger (TV)
• 1947 Love from a Stranger (TV)
• 1949 Ten Little Indians
• 1959 Ten Little Indians
• 1970 Murder at the Vicarage
• 1980 Why Didn't They Ask Evans?
• 1982 Spider's Web
• 1982 The Seven Dials Mystery
• 1982 The Agatha Christie Hour
• 1982 Murder is Easy
• 1982 The Witness for the Prosecution
• 1983 The Secret Adversary
• 1983 Partners in Crime
• 1983 A Caribbean Mystery
• 1983 Sparkling Cyanide
• 1984 The Body in the Library
• 1985 Murder with Mirrors
• 1985 The Moving Finger
• 1985 A Murder Is Announced
• 1985 A Pocket Full of Rye
• 1985 Thirteen at Dinner
• 1986 Dead Man's Folly
• 1986 Murder in Three Acts
• 1986 Murder at the Vicarage
• 1987 Sleeping Murder
• 1987 At Bertram's Hotel
• 1987 Nemesis
• 1987 4.50 from Paddington
• 1989 The Man in the Brown Suit
• 1989 A Caribbean Mystery
• 1991 They Do It with Mirrors
• 1992 The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
• 1997 The Pale Horse
• 2001 Murder on the Orient Express
• 2003 Sparkling Cyanide
• 2004 The Body in the Library
• 2004 Murder at the Vicarage
• 2004 Appointment with Death
• 2005 A Murder is Announced
• 2005 Sleeping Murder
• 2006 The Moving Finger
• 2006 By the Pricking of My Thumbs
• 2006 The Sittaford Mystery
• 2007 Hercule Poirot's Christmas (A French film adaptation)
• 2007 Towards Zero
• 2007 Nemesis
• 2007 At Bertram's Hotel
• 2007 Ordeal by Innocence

Agatha Christie's Poirot television series
Episodes include:

• 1990 Peril at End House
• 1990 The Mysterious Affair at Styles
• 1994 Hercule Poirot's Christmas
• 1995 Murder on the Links
• 1995 Hickory Dickory Dock
• 1996 Dumb Witness
• 2000 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
• 2000 Lord Edgware Dies
• 2001 Evil Under the Sun
• 2001 Murder in Mesopotamia
• 2004 Five Little Pigs
• 2004 Death on the Nile
• 2004 Sad Cypress
• 2004 The Hollow
• 2005 The Mystery of the Blue Train
• 2005 Cards on the Table
• 2005 Taken at the Flood
• 2006 After the Funeral

Comics

• 2007 Murder on the Orient Express Adapted by Francois Riviere, Illustrated by Solidor
• 2007 Murder on the Links Adapted by Francois Riviere, Illustrated by Marc Piskic
• 2007 Death on the Nile Adapted by Francois Riviere, Illustrated by Solidor
• 2007 The Mystery of the Blue Train Adapted and illustrated by Marc Piskic
• 2007 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Adapted and illustrated by Bruno Lachard
• 2007 The Secret of Chimneys Adapted by Francois Riviere, Illustrated by Laurence Suhner

Video games

• 1988 The Scoop
• 2005 Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None
• 2006 Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express
• 2007 Death on the Nile "I-Spy" hidden-object game
• 2007 Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun

Unpublished material

• Eugenia and Eugenics
• Snow Upon the Desert
• The Greenshore Folly
• Personal Call
• The Woman and the Kenite (horror)
• Butter in a Lordly Dish
• The Green Gate
• The War Bride
• The Case of the Dog's Ball
• Stronger than Death
• Being So Very Wilful
• The Last Seance
• Someone at the Window

Animation

In 2004, the Japanese broadcasting company Nippon Housou Kyoukai turned Poirot and Marple into animated characters in the anime series Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, introducing Mabel West (daughter of Miss Marple's mystery-writer nephew Raymond West, a canonical Christie character) and her duck Oliver as new characters.