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Thursday, 21 February 2013

Agatha Christie...The Amazing Author of her generation!




                 Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the “Queen of Crime”. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in 100 foreign countries. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays and 6 novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affairs at Styles, was written towards the end of the First World War, in which she served as a VAD. In it, she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian detective who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. It was eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.

                In 1926, after averaging a book a year, Agatha Christie wrote a master piece. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published by Collins and marked an author-publisher relationship which lasted for 50 years and well over 70 books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was also the first of Agatha Christie’s book to be dramatised- under the name “Alibi”- and to have a successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest running play in history.

               Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. She died in 1976, since a number of books have been published posthumously; the bestselling novel Sleeping Murder appeared later that year, followed by her autobiography and te short story collections Miss Marple’s Final Cases, Problem at Pollensa Bay and While The light Lasts. In 1998, Black Coffee was the first of her plays to be novelised by another author, Charles Osborne.

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