Agatha Christie, undisputed queen of the detective novel and of detective and intrigue plots, in her long life wrote over sixty novels, over one hundred and fifty short stories collected in fourteen works, to which must be added at least six romance novels under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott, a travel diary, an autobiography and several other contributions. The most famous mystery writer in the world has been translated into over forty languages. He created famous characters, now part of mass culture, such as Inspector Hercule Poirot and the cheerful improvised detective Miss Marple. Agatha’s life, full of adventures, journeys and twists, was a great source of inspiration for the author herself.
Agatha’s youth: great imagination and a mother with paranormal powers
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller, given name of Agatha Christie, was born into a wealthy family on September 15, 1890 in southern England in Wallingford. The author, in references to her childhood, remembers it as happy and satisfying: she grew up in close contact with her older brothers, Marjorie and Louis, and with her mother who personally took care of their education and, according to her children, had paranormal powers. This probably contributed to developing in young Agatha a notable sensitivity towards mystery and fantasy: the little girl did not have a very sociable character and preferred to spend her time immersed in her thoughts than playing with her peers.
In 1901, when Agatha was eleven, her father died in debt and left his wife and children bankrupt. The delicate economic situation forced her mother first to enroll her in a girls’ college, then to send her to study in Paris to guarantee her an adequate education. When Agatha returned from France, she found her mother quite debilitated, which is why the two moved to Egypt, Cairo, for a few months. On this occasion Agatha showed no particular interest in the pyramids or archaeology: her attention was mainly focused on parties and the search for a possible husband.
The first novels: between failures and interest in love stories
Having returned to England with her mother, to whom she was very close, Agatha tried the path of writing. Although with little initial conviction, he wrote his first stories: among others, remember them The solitary god (published in magazine in 1926) e The call of wings (published in the 1933 collection The Hound of Death).
At this stage, Agatha Christie created the pseudonym “Monosyllable”, with which she proposed to various publishers with a romance novel set in Cairo, Snow upon the desertwhich was never released.
It was her mother who encouraged Agatha to pursue writing and she did so, also thanks to the advice she received from a family friend, the writer Eden Phillpotts, who urged her to write something new.
The first detective books: the famous Poirot
In 1912 Agatha met her husband, Archibald Christie, a British army officer in 1914. During the First World War, she decided to become an unpaid volunteer nurse in Voluntary Aid Detachmentserving at Torquay Hospital.
It was precisely here that, in 1916, Agatha began writing the novel that launched her: it is the first story of the famous Hercule Poirot, Poirot at Styles Courtwhich was released in the United States in 1920 and in England in 1921. In the meantime the war had ended and Agatha and her husband had returned to London, where their daughter Rosalind was born in 1919.
The career of Agatha Christie, the queen of crime fiction, had officially taken off. In early December 1926, after releasing one of his greatest hits, The assassination of Roger Ackroyd, Christie had to face a great disappointment: her husband had fallen in love with a much younger woman, Nancy Neele, and asked her for a divorce.
The mysterious disappearance and the journey on the Orient Express
The day after the traumatic event, Agatha left a note to her secretary saying she was going for a ride and disappeared into thin air. Her car was found near a lake but there was no trace of Agatha. They were days of great apprehension: thousands of police officers were mobilized and the writer Arthur Conan Doyle, inventor of Sherlock Holmes, even turned to a medium, given his passion for the occult.
After eleven days, Agatha Christie was found in a hotel where she had registered under the name of her husband’s lover, a detail that allowed investigators to find her. The author was not in her senses: she underwent psychiatric treatment, spent a long time alone and after two years – in which she never told what she had done in those eleven days – she officially divorced her husband.
In 1928 Agatha boarded the Orient Express which connected Istanbul to Baghdad: from this journey she took inspiration to write one of her most famous novels, Murder on the Orient Expressreleased in 1934.
The passion for archaeology, travel and poisons
Meanwhile, in 1930 – the year in which Miss Marple, a lively amateur detective, made her debut in Death in the village – Agatha went to Iraq, where she met Max Mallowan, an archaeologist fourteen years her junior. They married that same year: Christie is reported to have said “marry an archaeologist, the older you get the more attractive he will find you.” Agatha decided to accompany her new husband and the group of scholars on missions around the world, thus a great passion for archeology and Ancient Egypt was born in her: this would greatly influence her novels, among which we remember for example Poirot on the Nile (1937).
In these years the author also wrote a memoir, Traveling is my sinin which he talks about his passion for travel and history. It came out in 1939 Ten little Indiansnow published as And then there was no one leftto date the best-selling crime book in the world.
Never before in this phase of her life did Agatha take inspiration from her passions to write her books: during the Second World War she worked in the University College pharmacy, where she deepened her knowledge of poisons, of which she was already very passionate, just think of the events narrated in Tragedy in three acts, The seven quadrants, Crime in heaven, A horse for the witchand several others.
The nomination as a Dame of the Order of the British Empire and the last years of her life
After the war Agatha received the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and the famous Grand Master award, presented by the Mystery Writers’ Association. Between the 50s and 60s he continued to write almost a book a year: his last novel, Goodbye, Miss Marplecame out in the year of his death in 1976. He also wrote an autobiographical novel, My lifereleased posthumously in 1977.
Agatha Christie had time to see, in 1974, the first film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Expresswhere, among others, Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman starred. It was one of the last public appearances of the queen of mystery who, as she wrote in her autobiography, according to her, had “a good life”. He finally died on January 12, 1976, at the age of 85.
