Agatha Christie Research Paper

Agatha Christie is a world-famous English author, writing arguably some of the best fictional murder novels and short stories of all time. Her incredible writing career has led to her earning the title of “Queen of Crime.”

Agatha Christie was a writer from Torquay, United Kingdom. She was born in September 1890 into a wealthy middle-class family. She grew up as the youngest of 3 siblings, and was home taught by her mother. Agatha's mother can be considered the influence on her writing, as she encouraged her often to write. While growing up, Agatha enjoyed playing fantasy games and creating characters and giving them their own stories. After her father died in 1901, at the age of 16 she traveled to Paris to study from 1902-1905. After finishing

She got sick with influenza as a child and her mother told her to write stories she liked to hear. (Curran, 3) A challenge from her sister to write a detective novel sparked her incredible career. As far as her inspiration goes, she found it almost everywhere. Agatha was a very observant person, making the simplest things she saw or heard a new story line. She was described as “saw more than she was seen,” illustrating how she turned her observations into great novels. She did this by jotting down all the things she saw and put them into several notebooks to reflect on when writing. (Woodbury, 7) This gave her ideas for potential characters and plots used later on. Agatha and her husband, Archie, eventually split up and she remarried. Her new married prompted even more ideas and experiences for her books. The places Agatha and her husband would travel gave her endless settings and ideas for her novels and short stories. (Curran, 5) For example, while Agatha and her husband sat in a coffee shop, she overheard someone talking about someone named Jane Fish, a great character for her book. She knew it would be something people would remember, and from this coffee shop conversation, the book “The Secret Adversary” came about. (Woodbury, 8) After she settled with her husband, she began working in the pharmacy at University College Hospital, where she gained vast knowledge of medication. (Curran, 9) This

Agatha enjoyed planning out the entire novel and all its details before she put it onto paper. This process usually took her a couple months to write and a couple months to revise before sending them off to the publisher. Agatha would enjoy reading the chapters of her books to her family a couple at a time after they all ate together so she could gauge the reaction her novel would get. Additionally, her family would enjoy guessing who the murderer was in all her novels as they learned more of the book. Her style of writing was most often a story of British upper classes that was very straightforward and simple, as she focused on dialogue and plot heavily throughout her novels. Agatha had a great career of writing, becoming known as not only the “Queen of Crime” but also the “Queen of Mystery.” (Woodburry, 6) Agatha earned this nickname and possibly the queen of all genres of writing because she was a top selling author of all time, selling over 2 billion copies of her 70 short stories and novels. One of her most popular novels would be “Murder On The Orient Express” which is an all time best seller and has been made into a movie. (Ntikoudis,8) In addition to “Murder On The Orient Express,” other popular books of hers would include “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”, “And Then There Was None”, and “The A.B.C Murders.” As she became older, her