THE LIFE OF AGATHA CHRISTIE

Agatha Christie, one of the best-selling novelists of all time, was born in Torquay, Devon, Southwest England, on 15 September 1890. Agatha was born into a comfortably well-off middle-class family where she was homeschooled by her American father. Her mother didn’t want her to learn how to read until she was eight, but Agatha was bored, so she taught herself to read by the age of five. She got her creativity from absorbing children’s stories, poetry, and starling thrillers from America. She created her imaginary friends while attending some dance classes when she began to write poems. She made it through her family’s financial problems and the death of her father at the age of seven, where Agatha successfully wrote dozens of stories. She later met Archie Christie, her future husband, in 1912. They both desperately wanted to get married, but after a complicated courtship process and warfare experiences, they finally got married on Christmas Eve 1914. It took her a while to get it finished and published publicly, but after her sister’s comment told her that she couldn’t write a good detective story, Agatha shifted her writings to detective stories during the First World War. 

1919 was an important year for Agatha, as she gave birth to their only daughter, Rosalind, and made her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published by John Lane of The Bodley Head. Agatha was inspired to create a Belgian refugee, a former great Belgian policeman during the First World War, when Hercule Poirot, her famous character, was born. Agatha continues to write by experimenting with different types of murder mystery and thriller stories. However, after the publication of The Secret Adversary and The Man in the Brown Suit, she realized that she has been treated unfairly by The Bodley Head and decided to find an agent, Edmund Cork of Hughes Massie who found her a new publisher – William Collins and Sons (now HarperCollins).

One of the most interesting events in Agatha’s life was the night in early December when Agatha left the house without saying a word. Just like one of her mystery novels, her car was found abandoned and Agatha was nowhere to be found. It turns out she traveled to Harrogate and checked into the Harrogate Spa Hotel under the name of Theresa Neale. People suspected that she was suffering from amnesia and had no recollection of who she was. However, Agatha never spoke of this with her friends or family. She later followed a course of psychiatric treatment in Harley Street, which provoked her to combine Poirot short stories for The Sketch magazine that created The Big Four. She later got a divorce in 1928 after living apart for years and accepting that her marriage was over. She escaped to the Canary Islands with Rosalind, where she finished The Mystery of The Blue Train with agony. 

Agatha then meets the twenty-five-year-old archaeologist-in-training, Max Mallowan, through one of her lifelong ambitions to travel on the Orient Express in 1928. They got married soon after they found each other’s company relacing and their love for traveling on 11 September 1930, at St Cuthbert’s Church in Edinburgh. Adding with her experiences in the Middle East, she wrote two or three books a year while she was with Max. She created most of her famous works, such as Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Appointment with Death, They Came to Baghdad, and Murder in Mesopotamia. World War II didn’t stop Agatha from writing more classics like Evil Under the Sun, The Body in the Library, Five Little Pigs, And Then There Were None, and The Moving Finger. 

Agatha was undercover as Mary Westmacott for some time because she wanted to write without having the pressure of being Agatha. Sadly, her undercover was blown by an American reviewer of Absent in the Spring. She focused more on theatrical productions during the 1940s and 1950s, which limited her writing routine. Agatha was last seen publicly at the opening night of the 1974 film version of Murder on the Orient Express, where she said that it was a good adaptation, but Poirot’s mustaches weren’t luxurious enough. With her 14 short story collections and 66 detective novels, adding with the world’s longest-running play – The Mousetrap, she has sold over a billion copies of her books in the English language and a billion in translation. After her successful career and amazing creations, Agatha died graciously on 12 January 1976. Her grave is in St Mary’s, Cholsey, near Wallingford.

References

The Home of Agatha Christie. (n.d.). About Christie. Retrieved from agathachristie.com: https://www.agathachristie.com/about-christie