Christie, Dame Agatha, 1890–1976, English detective story writer, b. Torquay, Devon, as Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller. Christie's second husband was the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan Mallowan, Sir Max Edgar Lucien, 1904–78, British archaeologist, educated at Oxford. He participated in the British Museum–Univ. of Pennsylvania excavations at Ur (1925–30) and Nineveh (1931–32), both in present-day Iraq.
..... Click the link for more information. , and she gained much material for her later novels during his excavations in the Middle East. An extraordinarily popular author, Christie wrote over 80 books, most of them featuring one of her two famous detectives; Hercule Poirot, an egotistical Belgian, and Miss Jane Marple, an elderly spinster. Her novels, noted for their skillful plots, include The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Death on the Nile (1937), And Then There Were None (1940), Death Comes as the End (1945), Funerals Are Fatal (1953), The Pale Horse (1962), Passenger to Frankfurt (1970), Elephants Can Remember (1973), and Curtain (1975); her plays include The Mousetrap (1952), one of the longest-running plays in theatrical history, and Witness for the Prosecution (1954). Christie also published novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. She was named Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire, in 1971.

Bibliography

See her memoir, Come, Tell Me How You Live (1944, repr. 2001).

Christie, Dame Agatha (Mary Clarissa)

Agatha Christie, 1946.

(credit: UPI/Corbis-Bettmann)

(born Sept. 15, 1890, Torquay, Devon, Eng.—died Jan. 12, 1976, Wallingford, Oxfordshire) British detective novelist and playwright. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), introduced Hercule Poirot, the eccentric Belgian detective who would appear in about 25 novels. The elderly spinster Miss Jane Marple, her other principal detective figure, first appeared in Murder at the Vicarage (1930). Most of her approximately 75 novels, such as Murder on the Orient Express (1933; film, 1978), were best-sellers; translated into 100 languages, they have sold more than 100 million copies. Her plays include The Mousetrap (1952), which set a world record for longest continuous run, and Witness for the Prosecution (1953; film, 1958). She was married to the eminent archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan (1904–78).