Agatha Christie prolific British Author.

Agatha Christie prolific British Author.  Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, in the county of Devon, as the daughter of Frederick Alvah Miller and Clarissa Miller. Her father died when she was a child. Christie was educated at home, where her mother encouraged her to write from a very early age. At sixteen she was sent to school in Paris where she studied singing and piano. In 1914 Christie married Archibald Christie, an officer in the Flying Royal Corps.

Christie’s first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introduced Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective, who appeared in more than 40 books, the last of which was Curtain (1975). Christie’s other famous detective, Miss Marple, an elderly spinster, was a typical English character, but while Poirot used logic and rational methods, Marple rglied on her feminine sensitivity and empathy to solve crimes. Marple was featured in 17 novels, the first being Murder At The Vicarage (1930) and the last Sleeping Murder (1977). In 56 years Christie wrote 66 detective novels, among the best of which are The Murder of Roger Acroyd, Murder On The Orient Express (1934), Death On The Nile (1937) and Ten Little Niggers (1939). In addition to these works, Christie wrote her autobiography (1977), and several plays, including The Mousetrap, which ran more than 30 years continuously in London.

Christie’s marriage broke up in 1926. Archie Christie, who worked in the City, announced that he had fallen in love with a younger woman, Nancy Ncele. In the same year Christie’s beloved mother died. The story of Christie’s real life adventure in 1926, when she disappeared for a time and lived in a Harrowgate hotel under the name Mrs. Neele, was the basis for the film Agatha. Witness for the Prosecution, for example, was chosen the best foreign play of the 1954 – 55 season by the New York Drama Critics Circle. Christie was most innovative when she revealed the guilty party in her detective stories, it has been the narrator, a group of people, a serial killer who tries to hide an obvious motive for his killing one of the victims, and so forth.

In 1967 Christie became president of the British Detection Club, and in 1971 she was made a Dame of the British Empire. Christie died on January 12, 1976. With over 100 novels and 103 translations into foreign languages, Christie was by the time of her death the best-selling English novelist of all time.