autobiography of agatha christie pdf

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

Agatha christie.

560 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1977

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An Autobiography

• ⌸ Nonfiction-about
•  1977

When Agatha Christie died on 12 January 1976, she was known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime, unrivalled as the best-selling novelist of all time with two billion books sold in more than 100 languages. Though she kept her private life a mystery, for some years Agatha had secretly written her autobiography, and when it was published after her death, millions of her fans agreed - this was her best story!

From early childhood at the end of the 19th century, through two marriages and two World Wars, and her experiences both as a writer and on archaeological expeditions with her second husband, Max Mallowan, this book reveals the true genius of her legendary success with real passion and openness.

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There is nothing more wonderful to have in one's life, than time. I don't believe people get enough of it nowadays. Agatha Christie, An Autobiography

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Begun in 1950 and eventually completed in 1965, Agatha Christie recounts her life from early childhood until the end of the memoir’s composition. The book came about from her reluctance to let others tell her story, as she explained to her agent Edmund Cork of Hughes Massie. Aware that the prospect was now inevitable, Agatha Christie took it upon herself to have the first word, although insisted that the book should not be published until after her death.

The best thing she has ever written. Woman’s Own

After Agatha Christie passed away in 1976, the manuscript was edited by her long-standing publishers Collins and her only daughter, Rosalind Hicks and her husband Anthony. As a result the narrative ends in 1966, and does not include some of Christie’s later achievements such as her DBE in 1971 or the success of the 1974 film of Murder on the Orient Express .

While there have been films inspired by specific events in Christie’s life, such as Agatha (1979) and the Doctor Who episode The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008), none of these are true adaptations of her autobiography.

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An Autobiography Kindle Edition

The autobiography of the queen of mystery, Agatha Christie.

• Print length 587 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher William Morrow Paperbacks
• Publication date June 8, 2010
• File size 1115 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

From the back cover.

Millions of fans the world over got to know her beloved characters, Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple, and the rest, yet for decades little was known about their creator. Dame Agatha Christie was a woman who scrupulously kept her private life hidden from view, dodging the press, granting no interviews, and even, for a brief time, famously disappearing. But shortly after the great lady's death, the silence was broken when An Autobiography was finally published.

The witty, insightful, and immensely entertaining reflections of a marvelous talent, An Autobiography is as compulsively readable as Christie's novels. In her own inimitable style, a brilliant eccentric whose life encapsulated her times sheds light on her past, including her childhood in Victorian England, her volunteer work during World War II, and, of course, her phenomenal career. Agatha Christie's An Autobiography brings into sharp focus a beloved and enduring literary icon whose imagination continues to mesmerize readers to this very day.

About the Author

During a writing career that spanned more than half a century, she created two of the world’s most famous detectives. Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. The author of 79 novels and short story collections, she was also an accomplished playwright--one of her 14 plays, The Mousetrap , is the longest-running play in history. She published six romantic novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott and wrote four non-fiction books, including an autobiography. Several of her books, including Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile , were made into hugely successful films. She died in 1976.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003QP4BII
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (June 8, 2010)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 8, 2010
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 1115 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 587 pages
• #147 in Mystery Writing Reference
• #554 in Biographies & Memoirs of Authors
• #1,333 in Biographies & Memoirs of Women

About the author

Agatha christie.

Born in Torquay in 1890, Agatha Christie began writing during the First World War and wrote over 100 novels, plays and short story collections. She was still writing to great acclaim until her death, and her books have now sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in over 100 foreign languages. Yet Agatha Christie was always a very private person, and though Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple became household names, the Queen of Crime was a complete enigma to all but her closest friends.

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An Autobiography

• Read only on LitRes Read
• Size: 830 pp. 9 illustrations
• Genre: B iographies and memoirs Edit

Agatha Christie’s ‘most absorbing mystery’ – her own autobiography.Over the three decades since her death on 12 January 1976, many of Agatha Christie’s readers and reviewers have maintained that her most compelling book is probably still her least well-known. Her candid Autobiography, written mainly in the 1960s, modestly ignores the fact that Agatha had become the best-selling novelist in history and concentrates on her fascinating private life. From early childhood at the end of the 19th century, through two marriages and two World Wars, and her experiences both as a writer and on archaeological expeditions with her second husband, Max Mallowan, Agatha shares the details of her varied and sometimes complex life with real passion and openness.

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Agatha Christie

Mystery writer Agatha Christie became one of the world’s top-selling authors with famous books like Murder on the Orient Express and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd .

Quick Facts

Husbands, daughter, and disappearance, movie and tv adaptations, who was agatha christie.

Dubbed the “Queen of Mystery,” Agatha Christie was an author and playwright known for books such as Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile , as well as characters like Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. Christie published her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles , in 1920 and went on to become one of the most famous writers in history with 83 books to her name (and her pseudonym, Mary Westmacott). She also became a noted playwright with The Mousetrap , which is still running today on London’s West End. Christie died in January 1976 at age 85 and remains one of the top-selling authors ever, with her combined works selling more than 2 billion copies worldwide.

FULL NAME: Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller BORN: September 15, 1890 DIED: January 12, 1976 BIRTHPLACE: Torquay, England SPOUSES: Archie Christie (1914-1928) and Max Mallowan (1930-1976) CHILDREN: Rosalind ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Virgo

Agatha Christie was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller on September 15, 1890, in Torquay, Devon, in the southwest part of England. The youngest of three siblings, she was educated at home by her mother, who encouraged her daughter to write. As a child, Agatha enjoyed fantasy play and creating characters, and, when she was 16, she moved to Paris for a time to study vocals and piano.

In October 1912, Agatha met Archibald “Archie” Christie at a dance. The pair became engaged in 1913 , just before Archie entered military training. At the outset of World War I, he was stationed in France and became a pilot. The couple married during his first period of leave, on Christmas Eve in 1914, and they relocated to London at the conclusion of the war.

Agatha and Archie had one child, Rosalind Hicks, born in August 1919. Their marriage began crumbling in 1926, when Archie revealed in August that he had begun a relationship with a woman named Nancy Neele and asked for a divorce. Agatha, who was also grieving the death of her mother, had an alarming response to the revelation.

On December 3 after an argument, the author, who had published the popular book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that year, left her home in Sunningdale and disappeared. Christie’s disappearance set off a manhunt involving both police and civilians. According to the U.K. National Archives , her flight became a media sensation and writer Arthur Conan Doyle even consulted a medium in an attempt to find her whereabouts.

On December 14, a stranger recognized Christie at the Swan Hydro hotel in Harrogate, where she had checked in using Neele’s name. She had no recollection of the prior 11 days, and her biographer later wrote she was in a “fugue” state caused by trauma or depression. However, some believed she had left on purpose to embarrass her husband. Christie ultimately recovered, with she and Archie finally divorcing in 1928.

In 1930, Agatha remarried with archaeology professor Max Mallowan, with whom she traveled on several expeditions, later recounting her trips in the 1946 memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live .

As she was growing her family, Christie’s writing career ascended. She published her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles , in 1920. The story focused on the murder of a rich heiress and introduced readers to one of Christie’s most famous characters: Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

Poirot returned in The Murder on the Links (1923) and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), a hit that was later marked as a genre classic and one of the author’s all-time favorites. The year of Christie’s second nuptials saw the release of Murder at the Vicarage (1930), which became another classic and introduced readers to Miss Jane Marple, an enquiring village lady.

Poirot and Marple are Christie’s most well-known detectives, with the two featured in dozens of novels and short stories. Poirot made the most appearances in Christie’s work in titles that include Ackroyd , The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928), and Death in the Clouds (1935). Miss Marple was featured in books like The Moving Finger (1942) and A Pocket Full of Rye (1953) and been played onscreen by actors like Angela Lansbury , Helen Hayes, and Geraldine McEwan. Other notable Christie characters include Tuppence and Tommy Beresford, Colonel Race, Parker Pyne, and Ariadne Oliver.

Writing well into her later years, Christie wrote more than 70 detective novels as well as short fiction. Christie’s success as an author of sleuth stories has earned her titles like the “Queen of Crime” and the “Queen of Mystery.” She also wrote romance novels like Unfinished Portrait (1934) and A Daughter’s a Daughter (1952) under the name Mary Westmacott. In total, Christie published 83 books, including works using her pseudonym.

Christie was a renowned playwright as well, with works like The Hollow (1951) and Verdict (1958). Her play The Mousetrap opened in 1952 at the Ambassador Theatre and—at more than 8,800 showings during 21 years—set the record for the longest unbroken run in a London theater. After a brief hiatus amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the show is still going strong today with more than 27,500 performances as of February 2022 .

Queen Elizabeth II bestowed Christie with damehood in 1971 for her contributions to literature. Three years later, Christie made her last public appearance for the opening night of the play version of her 1934 book Murder on the Orient Express .

Christie died at her home, Winterbrook House, at age 85 on January 12, 1976. That night, the lead actor of The Mousetrap , Brian McDermot, led a theater audience in a silent tribute to the author . At her death, it was estimated that Christie’s thrillers had sold around 300 million copies. She is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary’s Church in Cholsey, where she attended worship services.

It was reported Christie was in poor health in her later years, and she complained of an inability to concentrate. Friends also said she had fits of anger and began to speak nonsensically in conversation. This has led to speculation that she might have suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, though Christie was never officially diagnosed. A study by Ian Lancashire , an English professor at the University of Toronto, showed that Christie’s vocabulary had declined by about 20 percent based on words used in 16 of her novels over a 50-year-period—giving credence to this theory.

Several of Christie’s works have been adapted into popular movies and television shows, including as recently as 2023.

Murder on the Orient Express

In 1974, Albert Finney starred as detective Poirot in a film version of Murder on the Orient Express , featuring an ensemble cast that included Ingrid Bergman , Lauren Bacall , Sean Connery , and Vanessa Redgrave . Bergman won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, with Finney receiving a Best Actor nomination and the movie earning a nod for adapted screenplay. Murder on the Orient Express also inspired a 2001 made-for-TV movie.

In 2017, Kenneth Branagh directed and portrayed Poirot alongside Penélope Cruz , Judi Dench , Johnny Depp , and Michelle Pfeiffer in a reimagined movie version.

Death on the Nile

In 1978, Death on the Nile premiered and starred Peter Ustinov as Poirot, along with Mia Farrow , Bette Davis , and Angela Lansbury in supporting roles. Meanwhile, for a 2022 remake, Branagh again played Poirot alongside Annette Bening , Gal Gadot , and Armie Hammer .

See How They Run and A Haunting in Venice

Also in 2022, the mystery spoof See How They Run , starring Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan , took inspiration from Christie’s play The Mousetrap and featured Shirley Henderson as a fictional version of the author. A year later, Christie’s 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party served as the basis for another Poirot movie mystery, A Haunting in Venice .

TV Miniseries: Ordeal By Innocence and The Pale Horse

Several of Christie’s works have been adapted for the small screen in the form of TV miniseries, including And Then There Were None (2015); The Witness for the Prosecution (2016); The ABC Murders (2018), starring John Malkovich as Poirot; Ordeal By Innocence (2018); The Pale Horse (2020); and Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (2022).

• People often ask me what made me take up writing... I found myself making up stories and acting the different parts. There’s nothing like boredom to make you write. So by the time I was 16 or 17, I’d written quite a number of short stories and one long, dreary novel. By the time I was 21, I finished the first book of mine ever to be published.
• I think the real work is done in thinking out the development of your story and worrying about it until it comes right. That may take quite a while. Then when you’ve got all your materials together, as it were, all that remains is to try and find time to write the thing.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

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