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Agatha Christie with her daughter Rosalind –

Top 10 Amazing Facts about Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world’s longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End since 1952.

Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed in 1920 when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring detective Hercule Poirot, was published.

In this article, we state the top 10 amazing facts about Agatha Christie.

1. Christie was a writer during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Christie was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels of similar patterns and styles, predominantly in the 1920s and 1930s.

2. Christie was nicknamed the Queen of Crime

Agatha Christie –

Christie was also known as the Queen of Mystery and is considered a master of suspense, plotting, and characterization. Christie had long been a fan of detective novels, having enjoyed Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and The Moonstone, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s early Sherlock Holmes stories. She wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1916. 

It featured Hercule Poirot, a former Belgian police officer with magnificent moustaches and a head exactly the shape of an egg, who had taken refuge in Britain after Germany invaded Belgium. Christie’s inspiration for the character came from Belgian refugees living in Torquay, and the Belgian soldiers she helped to treat as a volunteer nurse during the First World War.

3. Christie was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature

In 1971, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Critic Sutherland Scott stated, “If Agatha Christie had made no other contribution to the literature of detective fiction she would still deserve our grateful thanks” for writing the novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

4. Christie has been named the best fiction writer of all time by the Guinness World Records

Agatha Christie as a young woman –

In her prime, Christie was rarely out of the bestseller list. She was the first crime writer to have 100,000 copies of 10 of her titles published by Penguin on the same day in 1948. 

As of 2018, Guinness World Records which is a reference book published annually, listing world records both of human achievements and the extremes of the natural world listed Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time. Christie is one of the most-borrowed authors in UK libraries. She is also UK’s best-selling spoken-book author.

5. As of 2020, Christie’s novels had sold more than two billion copies in 44 languages

Half the sales are of English-language editions, and half are translations. According to Index Translationum, as of 2020, she was the most-translated individual author.

Christie is one of the most-borrowed authors in UK libraries. She is also UK’s best-selling spoken-book author. In 2002, 117,696 Christie audiobooks were sold, in comparison to 97,755 for J. K. Rowling.

6. Christie’s book titled, And Then There Were None, is one of the highest-selling books of all time

Agatha Christie, collection Le Masque by Skblzz1 –

In September 2015, to mark her 125th birthday, And Then There Were None was named the World’s Favourite Christie in a vote sponsored by the author’s estate. The novel is emblematic of both her use of formula and her willingness to discard it. “And Then There Were None carries the ‘closed society’ type of murder mystery to extreme lengths,” according to author Charles Osborne.

The Christie estate claimed And Then There Were None was the best-selling crime novel of all time, with approximately 100 million sales, also making it one of the highest-selling books of all time.

7. Christie’s stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for the longest initial run

It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End on 25 November 1952, and by September 2018 there had been more than 27,500 performances. 

The play was temporarily closed in March 2020 because of COVID-19 lockdowns in London before it reopened in May 2021.

8. Christie has received numerous recognition for her work

Agatha Christie and Max Mallowan at their Winterbrook House, 1950 –

In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award. Later that year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award for best play.

In 2013, she was voted the best crime writer and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the best crime novel ever by 600 professional novelists of the Crime Writers’ Association.

9. About 30 feature films are based on Christie’s work

Many of Christie’s books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games, and graphic novels. More than 30 feature films are based on her work.

The first was the 1928 British film The Passing of Mr Quin. Poirot’s first film appearance was in 1931 in Alibi, which starred Austin Trevor as Christie’s sleuth.  Margaret Rutherford played Marple in a series of films released in the 1960s.

10. Christie became the first female playwright to have three plays running simultaneously in London

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE Directed By David Haugen Scene by SarahSierszyn –

In 1953, she followed this with Witness for the Prosecution, whose Broadway production won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for the best foreign play of 1954 and earned Christie an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

She wrote, The Mousetrap, Witness for the Prosecution and Spider’s Web. She said, “Plays are much easier to write than books because you can see them in your mind’s eye, you are not hampered by all that description which clogs you so terribly in a book and stops you from getting on with what’s happening.” In a letter to her daughter, Christie said being a playwright was “a lot of fun.