Agatha Christie

1 Pages 342 Words

When I think of mystery novels, I think of just one name-Agatha Christie. In a writing career that spanned more than half a century, Agatha Christie wrote 79 novels and short story collections (Dubose 42). Agatha Miller was born in Torquay, England on September 15, 1980 to a rich, loving family. Her father died when she was a child. Christie was educated home, where her mother encouraged her to write from very early age. She enjoyed writing, and it became a passion for her. She did not have a very active social life, so she spent most of her time writing stories and poems. At sixteen she was sent to school in Paris where she studied singing and piano. Christie was an accomplished pianist but her stage fright and shyness prevented her from pursuing a career in music.

When Christie's mother took her to Cairo for a winter, where she started writing her first novel, Mysterious Affairs at Styles. Encouraged by Eden Philpotts, neighbor and friend in Torquay, she devoted herself to writing and had short stories published (Morgan 23). Later, In 1914 Christie married Archibald Christie, an officer in the Flying Royal Corps. Their daughter, Rosalind, was born in 1919. During World War I she worked in a Red Cross Hospital as a hospital dispenser, which gave her a knowledge of poisons. This became a big interest, and most of her books had something to do with death by poison.
In 1926, Archie asked for a divorce, having fallen in love with another woman. Agatha, already upset by the recent death of her mother, had disappeared. All of England


became wrapped up in the case of the now famous missing writer. For eleven days, Agatha went missing. She was found three weeks later in a small hotel, explaining to police that she had lost her memory.
Agatha Christie, “The Queen of Crime”, died at Wallingford in Oxford shire on Jan. 12, 1976. Her dying words were “A good mystery is never solved” (Dommermuth-Costa 108). Agatha Christie le...