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 as a nurse in a military hospital, and then as a pharmacist in a pharmacy. Field knowledge chemical substances, and especially poisons, were 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 younger than his wife for 15 years.
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.
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 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 their 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 the death of Agatha Christie in 1976, they were published last novel about Hercule Poirot and her autobiography.
“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.
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During her long creative life, Agatha Christie wrote 60 detective novels and 19 collections of short stories, as well as 6 psychological novels, which she published under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. She not only became one of the most famous writers in the world, but also one of the most published: Christie's books rank third in the number of reprints, second only to the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare. She lived a long and eventful life, which in itself is worthy of a separate novel.
For the birthday of the famous writer website publishes her biography.
early years
Agatha Christie as a child, the exact date of filming is unknown.
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on September 15, 1890 in the small English town of Torquay to American Frederick Miller and his Irish wife Clara, whose maiden name was Bomer. She was the third child of the couple, whose daughter Margaret and son Louis were already growing up. Later in her autobiography, Christie wrote that in early years which she spent in home in Devon, then visiting my grandmother and aunt in South London, I was surrounded by strong and independent women.
Despite the fact that her older sister went to school, Agatha was homeschooled: it is believed that her mother, being a good storyteller and wanting to introduce her daughter to literature herself, did not teach her reading and writing until she was 8 years old. But a girl with natural curiosity I learned to read without anyone’s help and devoured books one after another, and at the age of 10 I already wrote my first poem, “Primrose.”. Among other things, the future writer was taught to play the piano, which she did so well that Christie could have become a professional musician - and only stage fright prevented her from doing so.
Agatha’s childhood, in her own words, ended when she was 11 years old: in 1901, her father died of a heart attack, and the family found itself in a difficult financial situation. The teenager was sent to a city school, but her studies there did not work out, and she was sent to a boarding school in Paris, where the girl stayed until 1910.
First World War and first marriage
Agatha and Archibald Christie, 1919.
20-year-old Agatha returned to Torquay and learned that Clara was ill. To help her overcome her illness, mother and daughter went to Cairo - a place where wealthy Englishmen often vacationed at that time. They lived in a hotel for three months in the Egyptian capital. Agatha often attended social events - as some biographers claim, in unsuccessful attempts to find a spouse.
Upon returning home, the girl took up music and literature - in addition to short stories she created several musical works. At the same time, she wrote her first novel, “Snow in the Desert,” created under the impression of Egypt, but publishers refused to publish it. One of the family friends recommended her to a literary agent. He also rejected her debut work, but offered to take on writing another novel.
In 1912, Agatha met her future husband, pilot Archibald Christie, under whose name she became famous throughout the world. On the eve of Christmas 1914, the couple got married, but after a short honeymoon the newlyweds separated: Archie left for France, where fighting, and Mrs. Christie volunteered with the Red Cross. She worked as a nurse in a military hospital in her native England, spending a total of about 3,400 hours there. Therefore the real family life the spouses began only at the end of the First World War, when Archibald arrived for service in London.
First romance and birth of a daughter
Agatha Christie with her daughter, circa 1923.
Back in 1916, Agatha Christie began writing the novel that was destined to become the first in her long career - The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Its main character was Hercule Poirot, a small Belgian who would “accompany” Christie throughout her life. There is a legend according to which Agatha wrote this work thanks to a bet. She bet with her sister Margaret, who also had an interest in writing and had publications at the time, that she could create something worthwhile.
The novel was rejected by 6 publishers, and only the 7th, John Lane from The Bodley Head, agreed to publish it, but with 2 conditions: the author had to change the ending of the work and sign a contract for 5 more books. In 1920, The Mysterious Affair at Styles hit bookstore shelves.
About a year before the “birth” of Hercule Poirot, Mrs. Christie became a mother: her only daughter, Rosalind, was born. Soon, Christie’s second novel was published, the heroes of which were the married couple of detectives Tommy and Tuppence, and then the third, “Murder on the Golf Course,” where the Belgian detective again appeared before the readers. It is interesting that thanks to her work in a pharmacy in the first years after the war, where the writer learned a lot about poisons, in her books murders are often committed through poisoning - lovers of the Englishwoman’s work counted 83 such invented crimes.
In 1923, the couple, leaving their daughter with Agatha’s mother and sister, went on a trip to the British colonies. Christie continued to create and, in order to break the enslaving contract, in her opinion, she found another publisher. However, the trip not only brought literary success, but, as it turned out later, became the beginning of the end of the married life of Mrs. and Mr. Christie.
The Disappearance of Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie in 1923.
In 1926, Archibald asked for a divorce. He said that while traveling in South Africa he met a certain Nancy Neal and fell in love with her. The couple had a big fight and Archie left to spend the weekend with a girlfriend. A few hours later, Mrs. Christie left the child with the maid, got into the car and drove away from the family estate - which they, by the way, named Stiles in honor of Agatha's first novel - to an unknown destination.
In the morning the car was found several miles from the house. They found outerwear and an expired driver's license in it. A nationwide manhunt was launched and continued 11 days, in which more than 1,000 police officers and 15,000 volunteers took part. Agatha Christie was found in a Yorkshire hotel, where she checked in under the name Teresa Neil from Cape Town, taking the surname of Archie's mistress. According to eyewitnesses, she was confused, did not remember anything and did not recognize her own husband.
At the time, many thought she staged a disappearance act to trick the police into suspecting her husband of murdering her. However, this is unlikely to be true: Clara Miller, the writer’s mother, died that same year, and Agatha was very depressed by her death. Modern doctors believe that both this shock and adultery affected her psyche, causing amnesia. The writer herself never told anyone about where she was and what she did, so the events of those days will remain a mystery forever.
In 1928, the couple divorced. Archibald married new lover, and Agatha and Rosalind went to the Canary Islands to finish writing “The Mystery of the Blue Train” - a work that, due to numerous worries, was not given to her. Around the same time, the first of her 6 psychological novels written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. For many years, no one knew the author’s real name, and only almost 20 years later an American journalist revealed Agatha Christie’s secret.
Second marriage
Max Mallowan and Agatha Christie, 1933.
In 1930, while traveling in the Middle East, Agatha Christie met archaeologist Max Mallowan, who was 13 years younger than her. They got married that same year. This marriage turned out to be happy for the writer, and she lived in it until her death.
The couple spent a lot of time on archaeological expeditions in Iraq and Syria. At this time one of her most famous works- “Murder on the Orient Express”, which was written in one of the rooms of the Istanbul Pera Palace Hotel. In room No. 411, where the famous detective master lived, today there is a memorial museum.
Christie mastered the skill of a photographer and captured on film what her husband found, and cleaned shards and ivory items with her own hands. There is a legend that she rubbed them with her own face cream. To better understand archaeology, she read many books on the history of ancient times and began to study extinct languages. Moreover, it was Agatha who persuaded her husband to excavate the mound, thanks to the findings of which he received recognition among his scientific colleagues. This experience is reflected in her work - in several novels the action takes place at excavations.
During World War II, Mallowan was stationed in Cairo, where he worked for the War Department. Agatha Christie herself remained in London and worked as a volunteer at a hospital while continuing to write. In 1943, she became a grandmother: her daughter Rosalind had a son, Matthew.
4 years later to the writer awarded the Order of the British Empire, and in 1971 awarded the title of Dame Commander. 3 years earlier, her husband was also awarded the same award for his services to archeology - so Sir Max Mallowan and Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan became one of the rare couples to separately receive such a high honor.
Agatha Christie's health began to deteriorate, but she did not give up writing. The last novel published during her lifetime was The Curtain. It told about the culmination of a more than 50-year “career” investigation of Hercule Poirot - a character whom Christie herself hated almost as soon as she invented it (!), and called “vile and pompous.”
In fact, the final work about the Belgian detective was written earlier, but the author did not dare to publish it, since the public loved the detective very much. And the death of Monsieur Poirot itself became a real event: after the publication of the novel The New The York Times published his obituary - the only one in the history of the newspaper dedicated to a fictional character.
Agatha Clarissa Miller Christie Mallowan died on January 12, 1976, aged 85, suffering from a cold, and was buried in Cholsey Cemetery, Oxfordshire, 3 days later. Her husband, Max Mallowan, died 2 years later and was buried next to his wife of 45 years.
“One Indian correspondent who interviewed me (and, admittedly, asked a lot of stupid questions) asked: “Have you ever published a book that you considered frankly bad?” I answered indignantly: “No!” Not a single book was published. exactly as intended was my answer, and I was never satisfied, but if my book had been really bad, I would never have published it.”
Agatha Christie. Autobiography
Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, née Miller, better known as Agatha Christie, is an English writer. He is one of the world's most famous authors of detective fiction and is one of the most published writers in the entire history of mankind (after the Bible and Shakespeare).
Occupation:
novelist, playwright
Years of creativity:
1920 – 1976
Direction:
fiction
Genre:
detective, adventure novel, spy novel, autobiography
Debut:
The Mysterious Affair in Styles
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 loved the profession and described 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: a total of 83 crimes in her works were committed through poisoning.
For the first time, Agatha Christie married 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 marked the beginning of Agatha Christie's creative career. In 1920, Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published. There is an assumption that the reason for Christie's contact with the detective was a dispute with 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.
In 1926, Agatha's mother died. Late that year, Agatha Christie's husband, Archibald, admitted to infidelity and asked for a divorce because he had fallen in love with fellow golfer Nancy Neal. After an argument in early December 1926, Agatha disappeared from her home, leaving a letter to her secretary in which she claimed to be heading to Yorkshire. Her disappearance caused a loud public outcry, since the writer already had fans of her work. For 11 days, nothing was known about Christie's whereabouts.
Agatha's car was found, and her fur coat was found inside. A few days later the writer herself was discovered. As it turned out, Agatha Christie registered under the name Teresa Neil at the small spa hotel Swan Hydropathic Hotel (now Old Swan Hotel). Christie offered no explanation for her disappearance, and two doctors diagnosed her with amnesia caused by a head injury. The reasons for the disappearance of Agatha Christie were analyzed by British psychologist Andrew Norman in his book The Finished Portrait, where he, in particular, argues that the hypothesis of traumatic amnesia does not stand up to criticism, since Agatha Christie's behavior indicated the opposite: she registered in a hotel under the name of her husband’s mistress, she spent time playing the piano, spa treatments, and visiting the library. However, after examining all the evidence, Norman came to the conclusion that there was a dissociative fugue caused by a severe mental disorder.
According to another version, the disappearance was deliberately planned by her to take revenge on her husband, whom the police inevitably suspected of the murder of the writer.
Archibald and Agatha Christie's marriage ended in divorce in 1928.
Second marriage and later years.
In 1930, while traveling around Iraq, at excavations in Ur, she met her future husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. He was 15 years younger than her. Agatha Christie said about her marriage that for an archaeologist a woman should be as old as possible, because then her value increases significantly. Since then, she periodically spent several months a year in Syria and Iraq on expeditions with her husband; this period of her life was reflected in the autobiographical novel “Tell How You Live.” Agatha Christie lived in this marriage for the rest of her life, until her death in 1976.
Thanks to Christie's trips to the Middle East with her husband, several of her works took place there. Other novels (such as And Then There Were None) were set in or around Torquay, Christie's birthplace. The 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was written at the Hotel Pera Palace in Istanbul, Turkey. Room 411 of the hotel where Agatha Christie lived is now her memorial museum. The Greenway Estate in Devon, which the couple bought in 1938, is protected by the National Trust.
Christie often stayed at the mansion Abney Hall in Cheshire, which belonged to her brother-in-law James Watts. At least two of Christie's works were set on this estate: The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, a story also included in the collection of the same name, and the novel After the Funeral. “Abney became an inspiration to Agatha; hence the descriptions of such places as Stiles, Chimneys, Stonegates, and other houses, which in one degree or another represent Abney, were taken.”
In 1956, Agatha Christie was awarded the Order of the British Empire, and in 1971, for her achievements in the field of literature, Agatha Christie was awarded the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, the holders of which also acquire the noble title “Dame”, used before the name. Three years earlier, in 1968, Agatha Christie's husband, Max Mallowan, was also awarded the title of Knight of the Order of the British Empire for his achievements in the field of archaeology.
In 1958, the writer headed the English Detective Club.
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 the rights to her most successful play, The Mousetrap, to her grandson, Mathew Prichard, who also inherited the rights to some of her literary works, and his name is still associated with the Agatha Christie Limited Foundation.
The last book published during Agatha’s lifetime was “The Curtain.” Christie hesitated for a long time to publish it, as if sensing that it was a requiem. According to the plot of the story, in Stiles, the setting of the first novel, Hercule Poirot dies after solving another murder. Poirot's game is over, Agatha Christie's life is over. Poirot's farewell letter to Hastings is like Agatha's farewell to her readers. " We will never again set foot on the path of crime together. But it was a wonderful life! Oh, what a wonderful life it was!»
Agatha Christie died on January 12, 1976, at home in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, after a short cold, a year after the triumph of her last book.
Agatha Christie's autobiography, which the writer graduated in 1965, ends with the words: “ Thank you, Lord, for my good life and for all the love that was given to me».
Christie's only daughter, Rosalind Margaret Hicks, also lived to the age of 85 and died on October 28, 2004 in Devon.
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 the early years of the writer's life. 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: a feature film was made, consisting of many parts, in which the main roles were played by wonderful English and 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 were filmed.
So, there is no doubt that Agatha Christie made a truly invaluable contribution to English and, of course, world literature. Author: Irina Shumilova
