Agatha Christie's first novel. Biography of the famous writer Agatha Christie
Do you know which books are the most published in the world? In first place is the Bible, in second place are the immortal works of Shakespeare. But on the third - works belonging to the “light genre”, the so-called entertaining literature, united by genre and author. Agatha Christie's detective stories are in third place in the world in terms of publication frequency. Over 4 billion copies of her works have been published in more than 100 languages. So who was the famous writer Agatha Christie?
Her biography sometimes resembles one of the writer’s novels. It contains love, betrayal and a mysterious disappearance with a happy ending.
The maiden name of the future writer is Miller. She was born in 1890 in the small town of Torquay.
During the First World War, the girl worked nurse in a military hospital, and then as a pharmacist in a pharmacy. Knowledge in the field of chemicals, and especially poisons, was useful to Agatha in her work. 83 of the murders she described in detective stories were poisonings.
In 1914, out of great mutual love, young Agatha Miller married a colonel whose name was Archibald Christie. Soon she will glorify this surname.
The first detective novel was published in 1920. It was called "The Mysterious Affair at Styles." The author has not been identified to anyone famous Agatha Christie. Her biography as a writer began precisely then.
1926 turned out to be an extremely difficult year for Agatha. She had to endure two hardest blows during this period: the death of her mother and her husband’s betrayal. In the twelfth year of marriage, Archibald asked his wife for a divorce due to the fact that he had met another woman. There was a quarrel between them, after which Agatha Christie suddenly disappeared from the house. The writer’s biography says that for 11 days her whereabouts remained a secret. It was only after this period that she was found in a small hotel, where she registered under the name of her husband’s mistress. However, she could not really explain how she got there, as a result of which doctors diagnosed her with amnesia. What actually happened is unknown, but it is believed that it was a case of what is medically called “dissociative fugue” - a disease caused by a severe mental disorder.
Two years after this incident, the Christie couple divorced.
However, fate was favorable to an English lady named Agatha Christie. short biography reports that already in 1930 the writer met an archaeologist with whom she lived in happy marriage for the rest of my life (46 years). His name was Max Mallowan, and he was 15 years younger than his wife.
Agatha Christie, whose biography is the focus of our attention, lived to be 86 years old. During this time, she wrote 60 detective novels and 6 psychological novels. The latter were released under the pseudonyms Westmacott or Mary Westmacott. 19 collections were published, which mainly included short stories. And 16 of her plays premiered in London theaters. One of them, “The Mousetrap,” became a record holder for the number of productions. The author's favorite creation was the novel Ten Little Indians.
Many films have been made based on the writer’s works, including multi-part ones, in which viewers with intense attention follow the investigations carried out by their favorite heroes - Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
Not only the books of the famous writer, but also stories about her are of great interest to readers. Similar monographs are published different languages. There is also a biography of Agatha Christie in Russian by E. N. Tsimbaeva, entitled “Agatha Christie,” published in 2013.
The creator of the best detective stories, Agatha Christie is still considered an unsurpassed writer in the detective genre. Over her long life, she managed to write a huge number of works that have become classics of English literature.
Childhood and youth of Agatha Christie
Agatha Mary Miller was born in the fall of 1890. Her father died early. Besides her, Agatha’s mother raised two more children: the brother and sister of the future writer.
Coming from America, Agatha's relatives settled in England as the first generation of immigrants. The girl received her education from her mother; she taught all her children at home.
As a child, Agatha played music well, but could not overcome stage fright, so she left her musical career.
Agatha Miller's youth came at a difficult time. The cannonades of the First World War thundered throughout the world. As a girl, Agatha worked as a nurse in a hospital for soldiers. The girl was very proud of her work and considered it the best in the world.
Agata wrote her first stories at the age of 18. Her love of literature, of course, came from her childhood. Agatha's mother often told her entertaining stories and instilled in her an interest in reading.
The writer's adult years
In 1914, Agatha received a marriage proposal from her lover, whose name was Archibald Christie. In this marriage, the already famous writer had a daughter, who was named Rosalind.
After living with her husband for several years, Agatha Christie (took her husband's last name) learned that her husband had a mistress. Archibald told his wife that he was leaving for a certain Nancy Neal.
The news came as a blow to Christie. After she learned of the separation from her husband, Agatha suddenly disappeared for 11 days. They searched for her, but found only a car. Agatha herself showed up a little later at one of the local hotels. It turned out that the woman had a memory loss due to nervousness. She barely remembered what she had been doing all these days. Hotel employees reported that Agatha checked in with them under the name Neil. The woman visited the spa and library at the hotel for 11 days. Why the writer chose the surname of the homewrecker to register at the hotel, she could not explain.
The official divorce of the spouses took place only in 1928.
After the divorce, Christy traveled a lot. She visited Iraq, where she met her second husband, who worked there as an archaeologist. Despite the fact that the man was fifteen years younger than the writer, their marriage turned out to be very strong and lasted a lifetime.
Creativity of the Queen of Detectives
At the beginning of her career, the future celebrity was thinking about writing under a male pseudonym, but the publisher dissuaded her from a rash step, because there was a certain novelty in a woman writing in the detective genre.
Then in 1920, Christie published her “The Mysterious Affair at Styles.” Two years later, the writer went on a small tour around the world, visiting Africa, as well as Australia, New Zealand, the Hawaiian Islands, the States and Canada.
“The Mystery of the Blue Train” is a work that Christie completed in the Canaries, having escaped there from the bustle and ex-husband together with his daughter.
In 1934, the writer published a novel based on the event of her disappearance. The novel was published under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Agatha called it “Unfinished Portrait”.
After her second marriage, Agatha wrote the work “Tell me how you live.” In part, it became the autobiography of the writer.
The literary hit Ten Little Indians is a novel set in Agatha Christie's hometown of Torquay. Agatha herself considered the work the best among her novels.
For reasons of political correctness, today this work is published under the title “And There Were None.”
Agatha created the cycle about Hercule Poirot very detailed and exciting. So in this detective series there are 33 full-length novels and 1 play. It also includes 54 stories about the noble detective.
In 1927, Christie's second most important character, Mrs. Marple, was born. The cycle of stories began with the work “Tuesday Evening Club”. The unusual image of the old detective immediately won the hearts of readers.
Later in the writer’s work there were other detectives, but Poirot and Marple could not be overshadowed by any other character. In addition to books, Agatha Christie was fond of writing plays, and was known as an excellent playwright.
It is Christie who is the most published author of humanity, after Shakespeare. The number of plays staged based on her literary works also breaks all imaginable records..
The writer's main novels have now been translated into 100 languages and dialects around the world.
Agatha Christie: the end of the road
Having reached the age of 85, Agatha Christie died after suffering from a serious cold. The detective queen was buried in the village of Cholsi, near the place where she lived in recent years.
A monument was erected in honor of the writer in London. A crater on the planet Venus was named after her. A rock group of Russian performers took her name as their name, and for many years successfully performed under the name “Agatha Christie”.
Spy novel, autobiography
Lady Agatha Mary Clarissa Mallowan(English) Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan), born Miller(eng. Miller), better known by the name of her first husband as Agatha Christie(September 15, Torquay, UK - January 12, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK) - English writer.
She is one of the world's most famous authors of detective prose; her works have become some of the most published in the history of mankind (second only to the Bible and the works of Shakespeare).
Christie published more than 60 detective novels, 6 psychological novels (under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott or Westmacott), and 19 collections of short stories. 16 of her plays were staged in London.
Agatha Christie's books have been published in over 4 billion copies and translated into more than 100 languages.
She also holds the record for the most theatrical productions works. Agatha Christie's play "The Mousetrap" was first staged in 1952 and is still shown continuously. At the ten-year anniversary of the play at the Ambassador Theater in London, in an interview with ITN television, Agatha Christie admitted that she did not consider the play the best to be staged in London, but the public liked it, and she herself went to the play several times a year.
Encyclopedic YouTube
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Subtitles
Biography
Childhood and first marriage
Her parents were wealthy immigrants from the United States. She was the youngest daughter in the Miller family. The Miller family had two more children: Margaret Frary (1879-1950) and a son, Louis "Monty" Montan (1880-1929). Agatha received a good education at home, in particular music, and only stage fright prevented her from becoming a musician.
During the First World War, Agatha worked as a nurse in a hospital; she liked this profession and spoke of it as “ one of the most rewarding professions a person can engage in". She also worked as a pharmacist in a pharmacy, which subsequently left an imprint on her work: 83 crimes in her works were committed through poisoning.
Agatha married for the first time on Christmas Day in 1914 to Colonel Archibald Christie, with whom she had been in love for several years - even when he was a lieutenant. They had a daughter, Rosalind. This period was the beginning creative path Agatha Christie. Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920. There is an assumption that the reason for Christie’s turn to the detective was a dispute with her older sister Madge (who had already proven herself to be a writer) that she, too, could create something worthy of publication. Only the seventh publishing house published the manuscript in a circulation of 2,000 copies. The aspiring writer received a fee of £25.
Disappearance
Between 1971 and 1974, Christie's health began to deteriorate, but despite this, she continued to write. Experts at the University of Toronto examined Christie's writing style during these years and suggested that Agatha Christie suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
In 1975, when she was completely weakened, Christie transferred all rights to her most successful play, The Mousetrap, to her grandson.
The autobiography of Agatha Christie, which the writer graduated in 1965, ends with the words: “ Thank you, Lord, for my good life and for all the love that has been given to me.».
Christie's only daughter, Rosalind Margaret Hicks (eng. Rosalind Margaret Hicks) also lived to be 85 years old and died on October 28, 2004 in Devon. Agatha Christie's grandson, Matthew Prichard, inherited the rights to some literary works Agatha Christie, and his name is still associated with the foundation " Agatha Christie Limited».
Creation
| One Indian correspondent who interviewed me (and, admittedly, asked a lot of stupid questions) asked: “Have you ever published a book that you consider to be frankly bad?” I answered indignantly: “No!” No book came out exactly as intended, was my answer, and I was never satisfied, but if my book turned out really bad, I would never have published it. Agatha Christie "Autobiography" |
In an interview with the British television company BBC in 1955, Agatha Christie said that she spent her evenings knitting with friends or family, while in her head she was busy thinking about a new storyline, by the time she sat down to write a novel, the plot was ready from start to finish. By her own admission, the idea for a new novel could have come anywhere. Ideas were entered into a special notebook full of various notes about poisons and newspaper articles about crimes. The same thing happened with the characters. One of the characters created by Agatha had a real-life prototype - Major Ernest Belcher, who at one time was the boss of Agatha Christie's first husband, Archibald Christie. It was he who became the prototype for Pedler in the 1924 novel “The Man in the Brown Suit” about Colonel Race.
Agatha Christie was not afraid to address social issues in her works. For example, at least two of Christie's novels (The Five Little Pigs and Ordeal by Innocence) depicted miscarriages of justice involving the death penalty. In general, many of Christie’s books describe various negative sides English justice of that time.
The writer has never made crimes of a sexual nature the theme of her novels. Unlike today's detective stories, there are practically no scenes of violence, pools of blood or rudeness in her works. “The detective story was a story with a moral. Like everyone who wrote and read these books, I was against the criminal and for the innocent victim. No one could have imagined that the time would come when detective stories would be read for the scenes of violence described in them, for the sake of obtaining sadistic pleasure from cruelty for the sake of cruelty ... "- this is what she wrote in her autobiography. In her opinion, such scenes dull the feeling of compassion and do not allow the reader to focus on main topic novel.
Agatha Christie considered her best work to be the novel “Ten Little Indians.” The rocky islet on which the novel takes place is copied from life - this is the island of Burgh in southern Britain. Readers also rated the book - it has the most big sales in stores, but to comply with political correctness it is now sold under the name And Then There Were None- “And there was no one.”
In her work, Agatha Christie demonstrates conservatism quite typical of the English mentality. political views. A striking example serves as the story “The Clerk’s Story” from the series about Parker Pyne, about one of the heroes of which it is said: “He had some kind of Bolshevik complex.” In a number of works - “The Big Four”, “ Eastern Express", "The Captivity of Cerberus" feature immigrants from the Russian aristocracy, who enjoy the author's unfailing sympathy. In the aforementioned story, "The Clerk's Tale," Mr. Pine's client becomes involved in a group of agents who are passing secret blueprints of Britain's enemies to the League of Nations. But according to Pine’s decision, a legend is invented for the hero that he is carrying jewelry that belongs to a beautiful Russian aristocrat and saves them together with the owner from agents of Soviet Russia.
Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple
Inspector Narracott is a detective, the hero of the novel “The Riddle of Sittaford”.
List of works
- - Agatha Christie: The Alphabet Murders (not published in Russia)
Agatha Christie in films
In the fourth season of the British television series Doctor Who, the Doctor and his companion Donna meet Agatha on the day of her disappearance. The series tells about the events that happened to Agatha these days. The Doctor and Donna also give her ideas about creating Miss Marple and the book Death in the Clouds.
In the second season of the Spanish television series Grand Hotel, one of the main characters, Alicia Alarcon, meets a young girl, Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller, who is interested in writing detective stories.
see also
- The Agatha Christie Hour
Notes
- ID BNF: Open Data Platform - 2011.
- Encyclopædia Britannica
- SNAC - 2010.
- Edited Guide Entry(English) . BBC Home (9 August 2001). Retrieved April 8, 2010. Archived August 25, 2011.
- Author Spotlight: Agatha Christie(English) (undefined). BookClubs. Retrieved April 8, 2010. Archived August 25, 2011.
- Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie (Miller) (undefined) . People (September 26, 2007). Retrieved April 8, 2010. Archived August 25, 2011.
- Newspaper “Book Review” 2012, No. 17
- Report from the ITN television company about the anniversary of “Mousetraps” in 1962 (video)(English) (undefined). ITN. Retrieved April 8, 2010.
GettyImages Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was a very shy child. While her older brother and sister playfully played with each other, she acted out the scenes that appeared in her imagination with herself. She also did not study brilliantly, even according to the modest requirements that were imposed on young students at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Girls were then prepared mainly for marriage: they were taught music, dancing, and needlework. Until the end of her life, Agatha Christie will write with gross spelling errors - which, however, will not interfere with her career as a writer.
The girl sang beautifully, but due to extreme shyness she never decided to perform in front of an audience. It was as if she felt that fate actually had a completely different destiny in store for her.
Love for Archibald
Wikipedia, Link
Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, young Agatha often attended balls of the English aristocracy. Studying at a Parisian boarding school increased her self-confidence, and outwardly the girl was always pretty. It is not surprising that one evening Agatha was noticed by RAF Lieutenant Archibald Christie. The feeling turned out to be mutual. The young people hurried to get engaged as soon as possible, and they did not delay the wedding - soon Archie had to leave for war, and Agatha remained in London. Separated from her husband, performing the difficult duties of a nurse in a military hospital, she first tried to write down the story that was born in her head. Daily work with medicines and poisons suggested the murder weapon - the hero of the novel died from poisoning, and the crime was solved by a funny little Belgian with the big name Hercule Poirot. Appearance Agatha “copied” the character from a real person, having once seen a group of refugees from Belgium on the streets of the city.
Archibald Christie, two family friends and Agatha Christie, Link
Time passed, Archibald returned from the war and tried to become a businessman to support his family. Agatha gave birth to his daughter Rosalind, and it was a bit crowded for the three of them in the small rented apartment. But business didn’t work out. One day my husband jokingly asked how her manuscript was doing? By that time, Agatha was determined to become a writer. But The Mysterious Affair at Styles was rejected by six publishers one after another. Archie's question prompted her to try her luck with the seventh. To her surprise, the novel was published, and she was given a fee of 25 English pounds. “Now you can earn a lot of money!” - this phrase from her husband finally confirmed Agatha in the idea that writing should be turned from a hobby into a real job.
Unlucky 1926
In six years - from 1920 to 1926 - she published six novels, Poirot could already compete in popularity with Sherlock Holmes, and Agatha and her husband changed their rented apartment to own house in the suburbs and even bought a car. The white streak in her life ended unexpectedly. First, Agatha's mother died. Not having time to recover from the loss, she was faced with a new misfortune. Archibald Christie admitted that he fell in love with someone else: his golf partner Nancy Neal. A quarrel followed, Archie left the house, slamming the door, and returned home only in the morning. The house was empty: Agatha left by car, leaving a note that she was going to Yorkshire. But there was only an abandoned car there. The writer disappeared - and the family quarrel acquired criminal overtones. By this time, Agatha Christie was already a well-known person in England, so the entire local police was sent to search for her, 15 thousand people helped voluntarily. Suspicion inevitably fell on the unfaithful husband, but it turned out that Colonel Christie had nothing to do with it.
10 days later, Agatha was found in a sanatorium, where all this time she went to physiotherapeutic procedures, played the piano and, in general, had a good time. But the strangest thing was the name under which the writer registered: she called herself Teresa Neal, taking the surname of her rival. She and Archibald divorced two years later, in 1928. She did not give any comments or explanations for her behavior in those 10 days for the rest of her life. Agatha once told a particularly meticulous journalist that she didn’t remember anything—thus, the version of amnesia due to nervousness was born. After the writer's death, British scientists analyzed her later manuscripts and stated that Agatha Christie suffered from Alzheimer's disease. But her grandson Matthew Pritchard denied these rumors. “I never discussed this act of hers either with herself, or with her mother, or with the people who witnessed the disappearance. I can only say that when people suffer, when they acutely experience misfortune, they are capable of very strange things.”“The only thing I can say with confidence is that my grandmother did not, as many people think, strive for publicity, to attract attention to herself or her books. She was very unhappy at the time, and a lot of people in her place would have behaved in a similar way,” Pritchard said.
The archaeologist's favorite woman
Agatha Christie decided to heal from her misfortunes by working and traveling. She booked a compartment on the Orient Express train (yes, that same one) and went to Baghdad. It was there, in Iraq, that the writer met her second love, the architect Max Mallowan. He was her guide at the excavations of the ancient Sumerian city of Ur. Throughout the entire season of excavations, Max was there: showing the country, talking about ancient monuments of civilization, even entrusting the processing of the found shards. “I thought then, as I often thought later, what a wonderful person Max is. So calm, he takes his time to console. He doesn't talk, he does. She does what is needed, and this turns out to be the best consolation,” Agatha later wrote in her autobiography. When the excavation season ended, the archaeologist volunteered to accompany her to England - and proposed. She also fell in love with him, but did not decide to get married right away. The previous bad experience and the age difference were scary: Max was 15 years younger, he was only 25, and she was already 40!
Agatha Christie and Max at the excavations - http://www.gwthomas.org/murderinmeso.htm , Public Domain, Link
But their feelings were so strong that they had to ignore such conventions. Subsequently, Agatha Christie joked freely on this topic: the older a woman is, the more valuable she is to an archaeologist. Their marriage with Max turned out to be happy and lasted until the end of their lives. Together they traveled throughout the Middle East, which gave the writer many ideas for her detective stories. He survived her by only two years.
After Agatha Christie's death in 1976, the last novel about Hercule Poirot and her autobiography were published.
“Thank you, Lord, for your virtuous life and for all the love that was given to me,” she finished her last manuscript with these words.
Agatha Christie is a famous English writer, prose writer, author of plays and popular detective novels. She is the author of stories about such iconic detectives as Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, who can rival the fame of the unforgettable Sherlock Holmes (author - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).
A biography and essay on Agatha Christie's work will undoubtedly prove quite useful and interesting for our readers.
short biography
Agatha Mary Clarissa Mallone (Miller before her second marriage), who later became famous as the writer Agatha Christie, was born in a small English town. The girl's parents were fairly wealthy emigrants from the United States of America. Three children grew up in the family: Agatha, as well as her brother Louis and sister Margaret.
Agatha Christie's biography is devoid of events, at least in early years life of a writer. Agatha's father died early, and the family lived poorly. The girl did not study well and changed several educational institutions, while she was interested in music.
When the First World War began at the beginning of the twentieth century World War, Agatha went to work in a hospital for wounded military personnel as a nurse. This gave her invaluable life experience. It is known, by the way, that a young, still unknown nurse began writing her first novel while working in a hospital.
When the war ended, the future famous writer studied to become a pharmacist. Thanks to this, she, having become the author of detective works, was able to describe poisoning using various toxic substances quite reliably.
The very first detective novel by this author, who changed his cumbersome name to a euphonious pseudonym, was written in 1915. True, the public was able to get acquainted with this work only in 1920, since until that moment all publishing houses rejected it.
There is also an autobiographical work: “Agatha Christie. Autobiography".
It will be useful for the reader to learn some instructive and funny facts about the famous writer:
- Agatha Christie was honored to be awarded the Order of the British Empire, received the title of noblewoman - “lady”, and her biography invariably sells in huge numbers.
- Christie signed some of her works with the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.
- According to some researchers, the writer suffered from incurable diseases: some call Alzheimer's disease, and others call dysgraphia.
- Agatha Christie happened to disappear, frightening the entire world community: when her husband asked for a divorce, the author of detective stories disappeared for eleven whole days and was even put on the national wanted list.
- In the books of the English writer, exactly 83 murders were committed with the help of highly toxic poisons.
- Agatha Christie's autobiographical story ends with the following phrase: “Thank you, Lord, for my wonderful life and for all the love that was given to me.”
During her lifetime, Agatha Christie received the proud title of “Queen of Detectives” from the British and American press.
Contribution to literature
This writer penned many literary works. There are two major series of her novels about great detectives: the adventures of Hercule Poirot, a funny Belgian eccentric detective; as well as a series of stories about Miss Marple, a sweet and respectable old lady, whose prototype is called Agatha Christie herself, as well as her elderly grandmother, who has not lost her sharp mind.
It is also necessary to mention that Agatha Christie's literary works have been filmed several times. Even the most famous film adaptations cannot fit on one page. Here are some of them:
- "Murder on the Orient Express".
- "Agatha Christie's Poirot."
- "Ten Little Indians."
- "The Big Alibi"
- "Miss Marple".
- "Mousetrap".
And this is not a complete list of film adaptations of her novels.
The series about Hercule Poirot was even adapted into a TV series, which is now quite popular and includes several well-developed seasons. But Miss Marple was not left without her own series: it was filmed Feature Film, consisting of many parts, in which the main roles were played by wonderful English as well as American theater and film actors.
Under another pseudonym, the English writer also published psychological novels - thrillers, as they would be called today. These psychological novels, like, in principle, her detective prose, were distinguished by a twisted, extraordinary plot and eventful action that kept the reader in suspense until the very last page.
In general, the work of the famous Englishwoman was truly heterogeneous, rich in new plot solutions, techniques and intrigues that had not previously been used by other writers.
Agatha Christie can be called a truly great writer. Her works occupy third place in the list of most published books, second only to the Bible and William Shakespeare. The writer created more than sixty novels, wrote creepy thrillers under another pseudonym, and was also the author of several plays that immediately appeared in the repertoires of the most famous London theaters. Her best books have been filmed.
So, there is no doubt that Agatha Christie made a truly invaluable contribution to English and, of course, world literature. Author: Irina Shumilova
