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Last edited by MARC Bot
April 22, 2024 | History

Agatha Christie

15 September 1890 - 12 January 1976

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, in the United Kingdom, the daughter of a wealthy American stockbroker. Her father died when she was eleven years old. Her mother taught her at home, encouraging her to write at a very young age. At the age of 16, she went to Mrs. Dryden's finishing school in Paris to study singing and piano. In 1914, at age 24, she married Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. While he went away to war, she worked as a nurse and wrote her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), which wasn't published until four years later. When her husband came back from the war, they had a daughter. In 1928 she divorced her husband, who had been having an affair. In 1930, she married Sir Max Mallowan, an archaeologist and a Catholic. She was happy in the early years of her second marriage, and did not divorce her husband despite his many affairs. She travelled with her husband's job, and set several of her novels set in the Middle East. Most of her other novels were set in a fictionalized Devon, where she was born.

Agatha Christie is credited with developing the "cozy style" of mystery, which became popular in, and ultimately defined, the Golden Age of fiction in England in the 1920s and '30s, an age of which she is considered to have been Queen. In all, she wrote over 66 novels, numerous short stories and screenplays, and a series of romantic novels using the pen name Mary Westmacott. She was the single most popular mystery writer of all time. In 1971 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

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  • Cover of: The Witness for the Prosecution
    First published in 1948 17 editions in 5 languages — 3 previewable Cover of edition witnessforprosec0000agat_x8m2 Cover of edition witnessforprosec00chri

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  • Cover of: Curtain: &, the mysterious affair at Styles

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  • Cover of: The Mousetrap: A play
    First published in 1954 16 editions in 5 languages — 2 previewable Cover of edition mousetrap00agat

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  • Cover of: Poirot
    First published in 1994 16 editions in 1 language — 1 previewable

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  • Cover of: Star over Bethlehem, and other stories

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  • Cover of: The regatta mystery and other stories

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  • Cover of: 13 for luck: a selection of mystery stories for young readers.

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  • Cover of: The unexpected guest: a play in two acts.
    First published in 1958 15 editions in 1 language — 2 previewable Cover of edition unexpectedguest0000agat_c2f1

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  • Cover of: Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbinders in Suspense

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  • Cover of: Black Coffee
    First published in 1934 14 editions in 2 languages — 2 previewable Cover of edition blackcoffeemyste0000chri

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  • Cover of: This house of sky: landscapes of a Western mind

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  • Cover of: Dead Man's Mirror
    First published in 1937 12 editions in 2 languages — 3 previewable Cover of edition lemiroirdumorttr0000chri Cover of edition deadmansmirror00chri

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  • Cover of: Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb
    First published in 1997 11 editions in 1 language — 1 previewable

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  • Cover of: Ten Little Indians: A Mystery Play in Three Acts

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  • Cover of: The mysterious affair at Styles: & The secret adversary : an Agatha Christie omnibus

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  • Cover of: English country house murders: tales of perfidious albion

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  • Cover of: Hound of Death
    First published in 1968 10 editions in 2 languages

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  • Cover of: London After Midnight: A Tour of Its Criminal Haunts

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  • Cover of: Spider's web: a play in three acts.
    First published in 1956 10 editions in 3 languages — 1 previewable

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  • Cover of: The harlequin tea set and other stories
    First published in 1997 9 editions in 1 language — 1 previewable

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April 22, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot move website to links
March 2, 2024 Edited by Lisa merge authors
March 2, 2024 Edited by Lisa merge authors
February 29, 2024 Edited by Lisa merge authors
April 1, 2008 Created by an anonymous user initial import