Agatha Christie
"The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes"- Dame Agatha Christie
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in southwest England on September 15th, 1890, the youngest of three siblings. Her parents were both upper middle class, her mother, Clara Boehmer Miller, was from a well off English family, and her father, Fredrick Alvah Miller, was a well off American stockbroker.
Agatha and her family had some rather unusual ideas. Both Agatha and her siblings believed that their mother was a psychic. although to be quite honest, it's really not unusual for children to believe outlandish things about their parents.
Agatha was taught at home, with her parents as her teachers. She was given a basic education in the 'three r's', as well as music. Most notably though, being home gave her the time and opportunity to be a hungry reader. Young readers often grow up to become avid writers, which is what would happen eventually.
Unfortunately, her home education came at a price. Her young days were spent in solitary hours, which is perhaps why her love of books blossomed. Maybe this loneliness was due to the fact that she and her family bounced from one estate to the next for several years, not as homeless vagabonds, mind you, but as visiting nobles often did.
Eventually, she made friends with a group of girls in Torquay. It was with these dear friends that she played the role of the hero in a play. She recalls later in life that this era was 'one of the highlights of [her] existence'.
Agatha enjoyed her childhood, but it came to a screeching halt when her father died from ongoing health problems towards the end of 1901, when Agatha was just 11 years old. Devastated and on shaky financial grounds, Agatha's life made an abrupt change. Her mother and her continued to live in their home in Torquay, while her sister moved away with her husband, and her brother joined the army and was sent to South Africa.
The following year, Agatha was sent away to receive a formal education. Over the next several years, Agatha would struggle to fit into the formal way of life that the other girls were by now used to. Her life as a child had been one of ease, a relative fairy tale, full of hours spent imagining, her childish mind allowed to run wild, and the abrupt change to formal schooling and away from her family would have been very difficult to adjust to. In 1905, Agatha was sent to Paris to finish her schooling.
When Agatha finally returned home to England in 1910, she was greeted by her sickly mother. The two decided it was best to go to a warmer climate, and shortly found themselves in Cairo, Egypt, which was a popular destination for the more well-off English at the time. Her time in Egypt was well spent, as she toured the sights. She didn't show a great interest in the mystery and archaeology of it at the time, but this likely influenced her later in life.
Being so far from England also didn't stop her search for a husband. Chaperoned at all times but her watchful mother, Agatha attended to social gatherings and balls of the day, always keeping a wary eye out for a suitable match, as was the custom at the time, especially for a budding woman of her age.
When they returned to Britain, Agatha was already becoming an avid writer. She wrote for and performed in several theater shows, and wrote poetry as well, but knew she wouldn't pursue either of those as a career.
The first short story was written with a fevered hand as Agatha recovered from a minor illness at her home. It focused on madness and dreams, perhaps thought of through a delirium of fever, although the ideas of insanity, dreams, and other such dark and paranormal ideas always had fascinated her (recall her belief in her mother's psychic abilities). While is wasn't a great story literature-wise, it was still compelling.
As a budding writer, many other stories began to flow. Agatha attempted to have a few of them published through local papers, but they were rejected. Some of them would end up being published later, after some revision and new titles.
Her first full novel was based on her recent time spent in Cairo, titled Snow upon the Desert. She attempted to have it published under the pen-name Monosyllaba. When she was rejected several times by different publishers, she became discouraged and shelved the idea for a while. Her mother noticed her demeanor and suggested that she talk to a family friend and fellow writer, Eden Philpotts, and ask him for advice.
Agatha did as she was bid, and was encouraged by his words. Philpotts even went so far as to send her work to his own publisher, who rejected it once more, but suggested she write a second novel instead.
While her writing continued to play a major roll in her life, Agatha never gave up her quest for a husband. She had several short lived relationships, and was engaged for a short time to another man, but her love life seemed to be taking as many hits as her writing.
Then one day in October of 1912, at a ball thrown by a Lord near her house, Agatha met a charming young man named Archibald Christie.
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| Archie Christie |
The two were together often, and I'm sure Agatha spent a lot of time imagining their life together. Then, in August of 1914, World War 1 threw a kink in her plans. Archie was sent to France to fight against the German forces, and so during a leave for Christmas of the same year, the two decided to get married then and there.
While Archie rose through the ranks, Agatha decided to get involved in the war efforts herself. She spent time at a local hospital, doing unpaid work and boosting moral until December of 1916. The following year, she became an apothecary dispenser (gave people their meds) and made a £16 a year until her service was over in September of 1918.
Once the war was over and the two were able to settle their lives, they moved into a modest flat in London.
During her little off time in the war, Agatha continued to read and write, now taking her influence heavily from mystery novels. Agatha started to write of a detective named Hercule Poirot, a Belgian police officer who took refuge in Britain after the Germans had invaded his home country. He was based off the fact that she knew many refugees were hiding out in England due to the war. Poirot would go on to be one of her most famous characters, but she didn't know that at the time.
Agatha began searching for a publisher for The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but she was once again met with rejection at every turn.
Agatha began settling into married life, while still on the hunt for a publisher. She gave birth to their only daughter, Rosalind Margaret in August of 1919. Since the war was over, Archie left his position in the military and went to work in the City Financial sector for a small salary. Though not well off, they still kept a maid. When Rosalind was born, the couple were living in Ashfield, as they didn't have many friends in London.
Then, finally, in 1920, Agatha found a publisher for her book. John Lane at The Bodley Head accepted her work under the stipulation that she change the ending. Agatha obliged, although I'm sure her heart was aching at having to change her work, and signed the contract. Later in life, she would go on to say that she believed the contract exploited her and her work.
Her next novel, published again by The Bodley strayed from her character of Poirot and instead featured a pair of detectives, Tommy and Tuppence. She made about £50 from The Secret Adversary.
Her third novel, Murder on the Links, published in 1923, again featured Mr. Poirot, as did many short stories that were featured in The Sketch magazine.
In 1922, Agatha decided to go on tour with her husband, who was the financial adviser for the British Empire Exhibition, so the couple left Rosalind with Agatha's mother, and hit the road. They were mainly in the South of the world, soaking up sunshine and surf. They spent 10 months on what was basically an extended honeymoon while promoting the upcoming Exhibition.
Once the tour was over, Archie took a job in the city, and spent most of his weekends playing golf while Agatha stayed home to work on her novels. Archie's job established him well into the world of finances, so their prospects began looking up. Since Archie spent so much time playing golf in Sunningdale, he decided he wanted to move, so the family moved to a flat there.
In the beginning of 1925, Agatha was invited to create a children's attraction for the British Empire Exhibition. She accepted and began work on a section centered around the story Treasure Island. Working with her was a woman named Nancy Neele, who's roll in Agatha's life was about to be much larger than she expected.
Nancy and Agatha's Treasure Island show was so popular that it ended up making it all the way to America in an exhibition, where it was met with cheers and glee.
Agatha and Archie decided to buy a large house in Sunningdale in 1926, that they named Styles. Then, in April, Agatha received news that her mother had passed away, so she went back to her childhood home for several months to put things in order and sort through her mother's stuff.
While Agatha was busy at her mother's home, grieving and dealing with the aftermath of her death, Archie was at their shared home, having an affair and falling in love with Nancy Neele. In August, Archie decided he no longer wanted to stay with Agatha, and made his way to Ashfield to tell her he wanted a divorce.
The divorce was (obviously) a sore subject. Agatha returned home to Styles, where the couple continued to spent several tense months together. Then, in December of that year, things took a turn for the worse.
After a severe argument on December 3rd, Archie storms away to spend the weekend with his lover and mistress. Around 9:45 that same evening, Agatha vanished.
She had left a note for her secretary, saying she was planning on going to Yorkshire. Her car was then found, empty and abandoned at Newlands Corner, with her expired drivers license and rumpled clothes sitting alone.
By this point, Agatha was already a beloved public figure, and her disappearance made headlines everywhere. The public were upset and pushed the police as hard as they could, many pointing fingers at her wayward husband. Sir Arthur Connan Doyle, author of the famous Sherlock Holmes books, even took one of her gloves to a medium, hoping that he could find her through supernatural means.
Archie was an obvious suspect, but he knew as little as anyone else. He told the police all that he knew, but that didn't keep him from being the villain in many people's minds. Agatha was loved by many, so a newspaper offered a £100 reward for her return, more than a thousand police officers and 15,000 volunteers were searching the rural areas for her, and her disappearance was even featured on the front page of the New York Times.
In spite of the public outcry and effort to find her, she didn't turn up until 11 days later, on December 14th, at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel (The Old Swan Hotel) in Yorkshire, hiding under the name Mrs. Teresa Neele, ironically the last name of her husband's lover.
Nobody will probably ever know the reason behind Agatha's disappearance, and opinions now are just as divided as they ever were. Doctors of the day say she suffered from amnesia, and probably has no idea what she was doing there. She makes no reference to those 11 days in her autobiography either, so it's doubtful we will ever know the real reason. Archie claimed when he came to the hotel to identify her, she didn't recognize him, and had a complete loss of memory until later when she was recovering at her sister's home. However, it's notable that she was overworked by her writing, her mother had just died that year, and her husband was unfaithful, so there's a decent chance she was depressed, possibly suicidal. She checked in under a false name, left her licence, clothes, and car elsewhere, and either forcefully ignored the news of her disappearance, or secluded herself so much that she didn't know. In my opinion, she didn't have amnesia, she just didn't want to talk about the situation to anyone, and the reason she left like that was because she was in a tizzy of unrelenting panic and sorrow, brought on by a horrible year of tragedy. Quite honestly, I doubt I would have reacted any differently than she did.
A lot of people assumed it was a publicity stunt, either to frame her husband for murder, or to gain more attention for her novels. Popular opinion now assumes that Agatha planned the whole stunt to embarrass or upset her husband, and didn't realize that event would get so much coverage and drama surrounding it. If that's the case, it's no wonder she acted like she couldn't remember, I wouldn't want anyone to know either.
In 1928, Agatha agreed to a divorce. She was able to keep custody of Rosalind entirely, as well as keeping the last name of Christie for publicity purposes. Archie went on the marry Nancy Neele.
The year of 1930 finds Agatha in Ur, on an archaeological digsite. Much of Agatha's travelling would influence a good many of her books, and she used her experiences to plan and plot her mysteries.
It was on this digsite that she met Max Mallowan, a professor of archaeology. There's little doubt that he already knew who she was, if not from her work, then from the embarrassingly widespread panic a few years earlier over her disappearance. Max and Agatha hit it off, and were married the same year.
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| Max Mollowan |
Agatha and Max traveled a lot, visiting several digsites around the world. She gathered a lot of ideas for her work, and began pounding out the books. According to Agatha herself, she would spent anywhere from three weeks to nine months thinking up a plot, some of that time was during the moths of the year she would spend on the digsites with Max. She claimed that actually writing the book would only take about three months time.
When the second World War broke out, Agatha went to work at a pharmacy, where she learned a great deal about poisons, which would then begin to be used in her novels once the war was over. Agatha had learned by now that the best way to write was to use every piece of knowledge and experience she had acquired, even the most benign and seemingly useless thing.
In 1934, she and Max purchased a house in Winterbrook, which would be their home base for the rest of their lives, and the place where Agatha wrote the majority of her novels. She kept a low profile from there, even though she was well known in the adjoining town of Wallingford. I'm betting that after the incident with Archie, she preferred to let her writing do the talking for her, and stay out of the public eye as much as possible herself. She was known to avoid interviews, and not much would have been known about her life had it not been for the autobiography she wrote later on. She preferred to let her characters speak for her. This way, she could view the world and the world could view her through the lens she chose them to see through in her work.
Somewhere around 1941-42, the British Intelligence Agency, MI5, got spooked that Agatha had an informant inside their top secret code breaking agency, Bletchy Park. This was because Agatha had written a character named Major Bletchy, who was hunting a pair of fifth columnists in Wartime England. They assumed she knew something she wasn't supposed to, but she assured them that Major Bletchy just happened to be the name of one her more beloved characters, and had nothing to do with Bletchy Park. They dropped the investigation against her shortly after. (Sidenote: I find this hilarious because her work was so good that it freaked out MI5. Also, I'm sure she got a good chuckle out of that).
In the 1956 New Year's Honors, Agatha was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire, in honor of her many literary works. The next year, she was appointed as President of the Detection Club. Max was knighted in 1968 for his work in the archaeological field, and then in 1971, she was promoted from Commander to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
It was in 1971 that Agatha's health began to deteriorate. In later years, analysts who studied her work believe she began suffering from a mild case of Alzheimer's towards the end of her life. 1974 saw Agatha's last public appearance when she went to see a theater adaption of one of her works, Murder on the Orient Express. Agatha still enjoyed theater by the end of her life, and had continued to write for theater during her career, her most famous work being Mouse Trap, which opened in 1952 and holds the record for the longest unbroken run in a London theater, at more 8,800 showings during 21 years.
Despite her health failing her, Agatha continued to write until the day she died. On January 12, 1976, Agatha Christie died peacefully from old age in her Winterbrook home. She was buried in a nearby church yard, as per her own request some 10 years earlier. Several newspaper and TV reporters attended her funeral, where several wreathes adorned her grave in honor of her many accomplishments.
Rosalind inherited much of her mother's vast wealth. During her life, Agatha had started a company to pour her work into, Agatha Christie Limited, and Rosalind held a decent amount of the shares, and made sure her mother's work was preserved, up until her own death many years later.
Dame Agatha Christie has only ever been outsold by Shakespeare and the Bible. She holds numerous records not only in her novels, but as a playwright as well. Known as one of one of the greatest mystery writers of all time, she has enchanted generations of readers and inspired countless writers.
Perhaps part of the reason her work has seen such great success is that she knew how to take her own experience and add a flare of whimsy to create a mystery that could enthrall the reader. Her interest in the paranormal, coupled with her experience of the real world, gave her an open mind and a vivid imagination. And I'm sure that the freedom she enjoyed as a child helped as well.
Even though she went through a traumatic year, perhaps lost her mind for a spell, and had her embarrassment poured onto the front page, Agatha Christie remained a smart, ingenious, and independent women. And yet, she still made time in her life for love and family, proving that following your dream doesn't and shouldn't come at the cost of your family.
Loved by many, Agatha Christie will go down in the annals of time as a legend, probably never to be surpassed. She was one of the lucky few who got to enjoy the immense fame and fortune brought on by her art while she was still alive. And she deserved it. She was a good woman, a fantastic author, a dedicated wife, and an overall clever and ingenious person.
Sources: Wikipedia, Agathachristie.com, biography.com, some former knowledge of subject
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