Agatha Christie,
DBE, (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), was a British
crime writer of
novels,
short stories, and
plays. She also wrote
romances under the name
Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 80 detective novels—especially those featuring
Hercule Poirot and
Miss Jane Marple—and her successful West End theatre plays.
According to the
Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling writer of books of all time and, with
William Shakespeare, the best-selling author of any kind. She has sold roughly four
billion copies of her novels.
[1] According to
Index Translationum, Christie is the most translated individual author, with only the collective corporate works of
Walt Disney Productions surpassing her.
[2] Her books have been translated into at least 103 languages.
[3]
Christie's stage play
The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run: it opened at the
Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November 1952 and as of 2011 is still running after more than 23,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the
Mystery Writers of America's highest honour, the
Grand Master Award, and in the same year
Witness for the Prosecution was given an
Edgar Award by the MWA for Best Play. Most of her books and
short stories have been filmed, some many times over (
Murder on the Orient Express,
Death on the Nile and
4.50 From Paddington for instance), and many have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics.
In 1968, Booker Books, a subsidiary of the agri-industrial conglomerate
Booker-McConnell, bought a 51 percent stake in
Agatha Christie Limited, the private company that Christie had set up for tax purposes. Booker later increased its stake to 64 percent. In 1998, Booker sold its shares to
Chorion, a company whose portfolio also includes the literary estates of
Enid Blyton and
Dennis Wheatley.
[4]
In 2004, a 5,000-word story entitled
The Incident of the Dog's Ball was found in the attic of the author's daughter. This story was the original version of the novel
Dumb Witness. It was published in Britain in September 2009 in John Curran's
Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years Of Mysteries, alongside another newly discovered Poirot story called
The Capture of Cerberus (a story with the same title, but a different plot, to that published in
The Labours Of Hercules).
[5] On 10 November 2009,
Reuters announced that
The Incident of the Dog's Ball will be published by
The Strand Magazine.
[6]
Text taken from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie
The Two Famous Creations:
Hercule Poirot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Suchet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercule_Poirot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie%27s_Poirot
Miss Marple
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Hickson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Marple
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Marple_(TV_series)
