Beware little old ladies!
This demure looking lady not only is the best-selling mystery writer of all time, she is the best-selling novelist of all time in any genre! Over two billion copies of her works have been sold worldwide, her oeuvre having been translated into over 56 languages.
Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, forever known to literature as Agatha Christie, wrote 66 detective novels, 163 short stories and six romance novels (under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott). She authored 19 plays, two collections of poems & stories, a non-fiction book about travels with her second husband and an autobiography. And, although an admitted amateur, she was in her lifetime one of the best informed women in the world about matters archaeological.
Dame Agatha's works are much beloved by the worlds of radio, film and television, as well as newer media such as video games and graphic novels. Christie first began writing for radio in 1930, and it was this writing which eventually led to one of her most famous achievements. In 1947, she was asked by the BBC to write a half-hour play to celebrate Queen Mary's 80th birthday. This play, Three Blind Mice, eventually would be retitled and staged in the theatre as The Mousetrap, becoming the longest continually-running play in theatre history. It opened on 25 November 1952 at The Ambassadors Theatre in London's West End. It has been staged, without interruption (23,000+ performances), since that date. The current home of the production is St. Martins Theatre in London's Cambridge Circus.
Over 30 feature films have been made based on Christie's works. The first, Die Abenteur, was a 1928 German production of her work The Secret Adversary. The most recent, Le Grande Alibi (2007), is an adaptation of her work The Hollow. And, of course, her two most famous fictional creations--Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot--also have appeared in countless television adaptations of her work. (Poirot is the only fictional character ever to have been honored with an obituary in the New York Times, following the publication of Curtain in 1975.)
To hear a couple of rare recordings of Dame Agatha musing about "the writing life," click here.
Tomorrow, we will examine more closely some of Dame Agatha's prodigious output....
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