ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In 1926, Agatha Christie disappeared for eleven consecutive days making, “...the perfect tabloid story, with all the elements of one of Christie's own 'whodunnit' mysteries,” (Milton, 2019). Her disappearance led to a manhunt of massive proportions as over 1000 police and airplanes were used to find Christie. Among many civilians who helped search for Christie, mystery writers Conan Doyle and Dorothy L. Sayers were called upon to also help due to their experience. Upon the discovery of her abandoned car, the buzz of a potential suicide rose. Other theories also arose including the possibility of this incident merely being a publicity stunt and her disappearance being the result of being murdered by her husband. However, Christie was found on December 14 in a hotel located in Harrogate. Despite being found, it, “...raised more questions than [it] solved,” such as why Christie did not remember anything, why she signed into the hotel under the name of her husband’s mistress, and how she ended up at the hotel (Milton, 2019). To add to the mystery, Christie never spoke of the incident and even left it out of her autobiography.

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Photo:

By Unknown - Daily Herald (London) 15 December 1926, p. 1., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32591516

Early Life

Christie was born September 15, 1890 in Torquay, Devon, South West England. She grew up in a middle class family and was primarily homeschooled by her American father. After teaching herself to read at age five, Agatha quickly found herself enjoying several children's stories, and by 18, she had found writing short stories to be a form of entertainment. A few of these stories, "...were published in much revised form in the 1930s..." (Agatha Christie Limited, "The Early Years"). From a young age, Christie was traveling as her family lived in France for some time and also traveled to Cairo, a setting for one of her famous novels Death on the Nile. In 1912, Agatha met Archie Christie. The two married in 1914 and, "According to her autobiography, it was the 'excitement of the stranger' that attracted them both," (Agatha Christie Limited, "The Early Years"). 

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Photo:

By The press-materials are presumed to have been distributed by Dodd, Mead Publishing House, which was the publisher of the book. - eBay item photo front photo back, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20599711

Christie's Time at War

Among her many inspirations for her work, Christie's time during World War I certainly inspired many of her writings and murders within her novels. In Torquay, Christie worked for the Red Cross and hospital dispensary. During this time, she learned a lot about medicines and poisons and even, "...had nightmares about making a mistake and improperly mixing poisons into ointments..." (Berlin, 2015). Ultimately this experience led to poison being a common method of murder in her novels; in all her works, a total of 83 poisonings are present. “Since I was surrounded by poisons, perhaps it was natural that death by poisoning should be the method I selected,” (Agatha Christie as cited by Berlin, 2015).

Photo: 
"Christie's time as a nurse and dispenser in the First World War without doubt informed her choice of poison as the predominant murder weapon in her novels" (AGATHA CHRISTIE ARCHIVE) Image credit: The Telegraph

Publications

Between the years 1920 and 1997, Christie published over 100 works of story collections, plays, and novels. While this timeline transcends her death, her publishing years were far from over when she died  as many of her unpublished stories have been published and continue to be published. Her first novel was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920. Christie was known for some of her beloved, long-lived characters such as Hercule Poirot. He appears in 54 of her short stories and 33 of Christie’s novels including two of her most famous works, Murder on the Orient Express and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Her novel And Then There Were None was published in the “Second Decade” of Christie’s six decades of publication during her lifetime along with the titles: Black Coffee, Death in the Clouds, Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, Endless Night, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, Lord Edgware Dies, The Murder at the Vicarage, Three Act Tragedy, and Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (Curran, 2011, 137).

To view a complete list of Christie's works, click here. 

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Photo: 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mystery_collection_(3219160455).jpg