Agatha Christie

Playwright, Author

1890 – 1976

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Who was Agatha Christie?

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, DBE was an English crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote six romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered 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 and Tommy and Tuppence. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap.

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

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly 4 billion copies, and her estate claims that her works rank third, after those of William Shakespeare and the Bible, as the world's most-widely published books. According to Index Translationum, Christie is the most-translated individual author, and her books have 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. In 1971, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

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Born
Sep 15, 1890
Torquay
Also known as
  • Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller
  • Mary Westmacott
  • Christie Agatha
  • Agatha Mary Clarissa Mallowan
  • Christie
  • Agatha Wallace
  • Mrs. Max Mallowan
  • The Queen of Crime
  • Dame Agatha Christie
  • A. Christie
Parents
Siblings
Spouses
Children
Nationality
  • England
Profession
Lived in
  • Sunningdale
Died
Jan 12, 1976
Wallingford, Oxfordshire

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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"Agatha Christie." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/agatha_christie>.

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