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 em all
cut 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 you
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 new mon 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 and son
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 archeological site etre where she became friends with the
Woolies who ran the dig invited back the following year she met the 25 year old
archaeologist 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 digs 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
years of the 40s were full of shortages along Chile 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 back Ithaca Larissa Miller's 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
fifteen or sixteen 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
Christie 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 type script 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 I think havoc used to take her in the
1950s just a couple of months - right 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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