Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on the 15th of September 1890 in Torquay
Devon southwest England into a comfortably well-off middle-class family
what made her upbringing unusual even for its time was that she was
home-schooled largely by her father an American her mother Clara who was an
excellent storyteller did not want her to learn to read until she was 8 but
Agatha bored and as the only child at home she was a much-loved afterthought
with two older siblings taught herself to read by the age of five where did her
creativity come from she absorbed the children's stories of the time Edith
Nesbit the story of the treasure-seekers the railway children and Louise M Olcott
little women but also poetry and startling thrillers from America
Agatha invented imaginary friends played with her animals attended dance classes
and began writing poems when she was still a child when she was five the
family spent some time in France having rented out the family home of Ashfield
to economize and it was here with her governess Marie that Agatha learned her
idiomatic but erratically spelt French at the age of eleven there was a shock
her father not well since the advent of financial difficulties died after a
series of heart attacks Clara was distraught and Agatha became her
mother's closest companion there were more money worries and talk of selling
Ashfield but Clara and Agatha found a way forward and from the age of 15
Agatha boarded at a succession of pensions and took piano and singing
lessons she could have been a professional pianist but for her
excruciating shyness in front of those she did not know by the age of 18 she
was amusing herself with writing short stories some of which were published in
much revised form in the 1930s with family friend and author Eden Philpott's
offering shrewd and constructive advice the artist is only the glass through
which we see nature and the clearer and more absolutely pure
at glass so much the more perfect picture we can see through it never
intrude yourself Clara's health and the need for
economies dictated their next move in 1910 they set off for Cairo and a
three-month season at the Jazeera Palace Hotel
there were evening dresses and parties and young Agatha showed more interest in
these than the local archaeological sites the friends and young couples she
met in Cairo invited her to house parties back home on her return various
marriage proposals followed it was in 1912 that Agatha met Archie Christie a
qualified aviator had applied to join the Royal Flying Corps their courtship
was a whirlwind affair both were desperate to marry but with no money
according to her autobiography it was the excitement of the stranger that
attracted them both they married on Christmas Eve 1914 after both had
experienced war Archie in France and Agatha nan the homefront now working
with the voluntary a detachment in a Red Cross hospital in Torquay they spent
their honeymoon night in the Grand Hotel Torquay and on the 27th December Archie
returned to France they met infrequently during the war years and it wasn't until
January 1918 when Archie was posted to the war office in London that Agatha
felt her married life truly began it was during the first world war that Agatha
turned to writing detective stories her debut novel the mysterious affair at
styles took some time to finish and even longer to find a publisher she started
writing partly in response to a bet from her sister Madge that she couldn't write
a good detective story and partly to relieve the monotony of The Dispensing
work which she was now doing when the hospital opened a dispensary she
accepted an offer to work there and completed the examination of the Society
of apothecaries she first worked out her plot and then found her characters on a
tram in Torquay she finished the manuscript during her two-week holiday
which she spent at the mall and hotel at a tour on Dartmoor and you found
expertise in poisons was also put to good use the murder as he
of poison was so well described that when the book was eventually published
Agatha received an unprecedented honor for a writer of fiction a review in the
pharmaceutical journal 1919 was a momentous year for Agatha with the end
of the war but she had found a job in the city and they had just enough money
to rent and furnish a flat in London later that year on the 5th August
Agatha gave birth to their only daughter Rosalind it was also the year that a
publisher John Lane of the Bodley head and the 4th to have received the
manuscript accepted the mysterious affair at styles for publication and
contracted Agatha to produce five more books John Lane insisted on a couple of
changes to her manuscript including a reworked final chapter instead of a
courtroom climax Lane proposed the now-familiar de Neumann in the library
so where did the inspiration for Hercule Poirot come from during the first world
war there were Belgian refugees in most parts of the English countryside Torquay
being no exception although he was not based on any particular person agatha
thought that a Belgian refugee a former great Belgian policeman would make an
excellent detective for the mysterious affair at styles Hercule Poirot was born
following the war Agatha continued to write experimenting with different types
of thriller and murder mystery stories creating first Tommy and tuppence and
then Miss Marple in quick succession in 1922 leaving Rosalind with her nurse and
her mother she and Archie traveled across the then British Empire promoting
the Empire exhibition of 1924 she continued to write agatha received the
joyous news of good reviews for the secret adversary while in Cape Town
where she also became the first British woman to surf standing up and Archie's
boss proved the inspiration for So You stands pedlar in the man in the brown
suit also set in Africa by this time Christie had already decided to change
publishers fed up with what she saw as the unfair terms offered by the Bodley
head she sought out an agent edmund cork of Hughes Massey and he found her a new
publisher William Collins & Sons now harpercollins once returned from the
Grand Tour the family were reunited and settled in a house they named styles in
the suburbs outside London it was a difficult time for Agatha her mother had
died and she was often alone clearing out the family home in Torquay and
struggling to write the next novel for Collins Archie and Agatha's relationship
strained by the sadness in her life broke down when Archie fell in love with
a fellow golfer and friend of the family Nancy Niall Archie was a keen golfer
Agatha not one night in early December overwhelmed and with close friend and
secretary Carlo away for the night Agatha left Rosalind and the house to
the care of the mates without saying where she was going
her car was found abandoned the next morning several miles away a nationwide
search ensued the present public enjoyed various speculations as to what might
have happened and why but no one knew for sure it eventually transpired that
Agatha had somehow travelled to Kings Cross station where she took the train
to Harrogate and checked into the Harrogate spa hotel under the name of
Teresa neele previously of South Africa having been recognised by the hotel
staff who alerted the police she did not recognise Archie when he came to meet
her possibly concussed but certainly
suffering from amnesia Agatha had no recollection of who she was an intensely
private person made even more so by the hue and cry of the press Agatha never
spoke of this time with friends or family Agatha and Archie remained apart
Agartha living with rosalind and carlo in london and following a course of
psychiatric treatment in Harley Street needing an income and unable to write
new material her brother-in-law Campbell Christie suggested she combine waro
short stories composed for the sketch magazine thus creating the big four
finally accepting that her marriage was over divorce from Archie was granted in
1928 Agatha and Rosalind immediately escaped England to the Canary Islands
where Agatha painfully finished the mystery of the blue train the book she
had struggled with as she mourned her mother late in 90
twenty-eight Agatha wrote her first merry Westmacott novel giant spread not
a detective novel but a work of fiction about a composer forced to work for
financial reasons on of Agatha's lifelong ambitions had been to travel on
the Orient Express and her first journey took place in the autumn of 1928
persuaded by a chance dinner party conversation
Agatha set off for Baghdad and from there traveled to the archaeological
site at her where she became friends with the Woolies who ran the dig invited
back the following year she met the 25 year old archeologist in training Max
Malone who was to become her second husband asked by Katherine Woolley to
show Agatha the sights each found the other's company relaxing their
relationship was forged by travel max could rough it and so could Agatha max
proposed on the last evening of his visit to Agatha's family home of
Ashfield they were married on September 11th 1930 at st. Cuthbert's Church in
Edinburgh and a girth only slightly reduced her age in her new passport
acquired for the honeymoon max returned to the Woolies dick for the
last time alone and Agatha to London and writing thus began a productive and
recurring annual writing and travelling routine for Agatha and max summers at
ashfield with Rosalind Christmas with her sister's family at Abney hall late
autumn and spring on Diggs and the rest of the year in London and their country
house in winter Brook on the edge of Wallingford Oxfordshire as a rule Agatha
wrote two or three books the air and when with Max often wrote a chapter or
two during quiet mornings and helped out on site in the afternoons the atmosphere
of the Middle East was not lost on Agatha as can be seen in books such as
Murder on the Orient Express death on the Nile murder in Mesopotamia
appointment with death and they came to Baghdad as well as many short stories
written within this period
World War two saw max get a wartime job in Cairo using his languages to assist
the war effort while Agatha remained in England writing and also volunteering at
the dispensary at University College Hospital in London an or M was her own
patriotic gesture to the war effort and she was disconcerted to see its
publication delayed in the US until after the Americans had joined the
Allies Rosalind having married Hubert Pritchard gave birth to Mathew on 21st
of September 1943 max was in Cairo but Agatha was a doting grandmother and
often went to help look after the baby Agatha was focused and prolific during
this period missing Max and with external entertainment more limited in
wartime she wrote and/or published such classics as and then there were none
evil Under the Sun the body in the library five little pigs and the moving
finger by 1945 and the return of max with the end of the war Agatha had
realized the tax implications of writing so much she became less prolific and now
in her mid fifties enjoyed a slower pace of life like the rest of the country the
last year's of the 40s were full of shortages along chilly depressing hall
food rationing did not end until 1954 at the end of 1946 Agatha's cover as Mary
Westmacott was blown by an American reviewer of absent in the spring she was
disappointed as she had enjoyed the freedom to write without the pressure of
being Agatha Christie the 1940s and 50s saw much time-consuming work with
theatrical productions which also limited the time Agatha could devote to
writing Agatha's last public appearance was at the opening night of the 1974
film version of Murder on the Orient Express starring Albert Finney as
Hercule Poirot her verdict a good adaptation with the minor point that why
arroz moustaches weren't luxurious enough after a hugely successful career
and a very happy life Agatha died peacefully on the 12th of January 1976
she is buried in the churchyard of st. Mary's chowsie near Wallingford Christie
wrote this in 1972 my own 10 would certainly vary from time to time because
every now and then I reread an early book for some particular reason to
answer a question that has been asked me perhaps
and then I alter my opinion sometimes thinking it is much better than I
thought it was or not so good as I had thought at the moment my own list would
possibly be and then there were none a difficult technique which was a
challenge and so I enjoyed it and I think dealt with it satisfactorily the
murder of Roger Ackroyd a general favorite a murder is announced I thought
all the characters interesting to write about and felt I knew them quite well by
the time the book was finished Murder on the Orient Express again because it was
a new idea for a plot the 13 problems a good series of stories towards zero I
found it interesting to work on the idea of people from different places coming
towards a murder instead of starting with the murder and working from that
endless night my own favorite at present crooked house I found a study of a
certain family interesting to explore ordeal by innocence an idea I had had
for some time before starting to work upon it
spending most of her time with imaginary friends
Agatha Clarissa millas unconventional childhood fostered an extraordinary
imagination against her mother's wishes she taught herself to read and had
little or no formal education until the age of 15 or 16 when she was sent to a
finishing school in Paris Agatha Christie always said that she had no
ambition to be a writer although she made her debut in print at the age of
eleven with a poem printed in a local London newspaper finding herself in bed
with influenza her mother suggested she write down the stories she was so fond
of telling and so a lifelong passion began by her late teens she had had
several poems published in the poetry review and had written a number of short
stories but it was her sisters challenge to write a detective story that would
later spark what would become her illustrious career Agatha Christie wrote
about the world she knew and saw drawing on the military gentlemen lords and
ladies spinsters widows and doctors of her family's circle of friends and
acquaintances she was a natural observer and her descriptions of village politics
local rivalries and family jealousies are often painfully accurate
Matthew Pritchard describes her as a person who listened more than she talked
who saw more than she was seen the most every day events and casual observations
could trigger the idea for a new plot her second book the secret adversary
stemmed from a conversation overheard in a tea shop two people were talking at a
table nearby discussing somebody called Jane fish that I thought would make a
good beginning to a story a name overheard at a tea shop an unusual name
so that whoever heard it remembered it a name like Jane fish or perhaps Jane Finn
would be even better and how are these ideas turned into novels she made
endless notes in dozens of notebooks jotting down erratic ideas and potential
plots and characters as they came to her I usually have about half a dozen
notebooks on hand and I used to make notes in them of ideas that struck me or
about some poison or drug or a clever little bit of swindling that I had read
about in the paper of the more than 100 notebooks that must have existed 73 have
survived and John Karen's detailed and thorough analysis provides a veritable
treasure trove of revelations about her stories and how they evolved see Agatha
Christie's secret notebooks the notebooks themselves include previously
unpublished material and are an intriguing look into her mind and craft
the seeds for several stories are easily identified in 1963 a notebook held
details of a plot in development West Indian book Miss M Poirot B and D
apparently devoted actually B and G Georgina had a fair four years old frog
major nose has seen him before he is killed a Caribbean mystery was published
in 1964 with the old frog as the novel's first victim the Caribbean island is
beautifully described and was probably based on st. Lucia an island that
Christi had visited on holiday but many of the hundreds of plots and red
herrings from her fertile imagination never actually made it into print and as
she herself said nothing turns out quite in the way that you thought it would
when you were sketching out notes for the first chapter or walking about
muttering to yourself and seeing a story unroll as Mathew Pritchard explains she
then used to dictate her stories into a machine called a dictaphone and then a
secretary typed this up into a typescript which my grandmother would
correct by hand I think that before the war before dictaphones were invented she
probably used to write the stories out in longhand and then somebody used to
type them she wasn't very mechanical she wrote in a very natural way and she
wrote very quickly I think a book used to take her in the 1950s just a couple
of months to write and then a month to revise before it was sent off to the
publishers once the whole process of writing the book had finished then
sometimes she used to read the stories to us after dinner one chapter or two
chapters at a time I think we were used as her guinea pigs at that stage to find
out what the reaction of the general public would be of
course apart from my family there were usually some other guests here and
reactions were very different only my mother always knew who the murderer was
the rest of us were sometimes successful and sometimes not my grandfather was
usually asleep for most of the time that these stories were read but the rest of
us were usually very attentive it was a lovely family occasion and then a couple
of months later we would see these stories in the book shops
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