Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie
Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was an English crime novelist, short story writer, and playwright. She also wrote six romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best known for the 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections she wrote under her own name, most of which revolve around the investigations of such characters as Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple, Mr Satterthwaite, and Tommy and Tuppence. Agatha-Mary Clarissa Christie was born on 15 September 1890 into a wealthy upper middle-class family in Ashfield, Torquay, Devon in South West England.
First novels: 1919–1923
¨Christie had long been a fan of detective
novels, having enjoyed Wilkie
Collins' The Woman in White and The Moonstone as well as Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle's early Sherlock Holmes stories. She wrote her own detective novel The
Mysterious Affair at Styles featuring Hercule Poirot;
portrayed as a former Belgian police officer noted for his twirly
large "magnificent moustaches" and egg-shaped head, who took refuge
in Britain after Germany had invaded Belgium. Christie's inspiration for this
stemmed from real Belgian refugees who existed in Torquay.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
It is the masterpiece of Agatha Christie.
This detective story made her famous in 1926. And it is still worth reading
now. The plot is not very intricate. It starts with a murder and the famous
detective Hercule Poirot is
asked to investigate it. But the murder turns out to be rather mysterious… Yet Hercule Poirot did
his best and found the murderer and it was…..Oh, I won’t tell you because it is
the surprise ending that makes this story special.
Later life
From 1971 to 1974, Christie's health
began to fail, although she continued to write. In 1975, sensing her increasing
weakness, Christie signed over the rights of her most successful play, The
Mousetrap, to her grandson. Recently, using experimental textual tools of
analysis, Canadian researchers have suggested that Christie may have begun to
suffer from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia.Agatha
Christie died on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at her Winterbrook House
in the north of Cholsey
parish, adjoining Wallingford in Oxfordshire. She
is buried in the nearby churchyard of St Mary's, Cholsey. She
was survived by her only child, Rosalind Margaret Hicks.
