Agatha Christie

Christie was born on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, Devon, England to Frederick Alvah Miller and Clarissa Margaret Boehmer. Her father was a wealthy American stockbroker and her mother was from a European family that had been under financial strain. Christie’s early years had a major impact on her life as she got older, and her ability to write unique stories with unexpected endings. Three of Christie’s most successful works were her novels The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Ten Little Indians, and Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.

Christie’s writings were influenced by what was happening around her and in England during her early years. She grew up during the Modern Age in England. This was a historical time period beginning in 1890, and ending in the late 1930s. The ruler prior to this was Queen Victoria. During her reign England was the most powerful nation in the world and it was common for people to have servants (Christie’s family had 3). When her son Edward VII came to the throne after her death the stability of Britain began to waver. Then in 1910 when George V became King things became even worse. Germany and America were becoming more popular while Britain was struggling to get out of an economic depression. Then when World War I started, the country began to lose faith in in the idea of Victorian progress. The war lead to many economic consequences, the fall in the value of money and the rise of taxes.

Christie was the youngest of three children and spent the majority of her childhood at either her home in Devonshire or her grandmother’s home in Ealing, West London as well as Southern Europe. She was raised a Christian; but, believed like two sisters that her mother was a psychic. She was homeschooled until she was 11 when ...

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... Judges, children, and sometimes even the narrator. In some books, Christie used attempted murders or actual murders to through the suspicion off of certain characters. In another, the murderer stages his own death, so that everyone believes that he is already dead when the rest of the suspects are killed.

Agatha Christie is one of the world’s most successful writer’s. She is well known for her ability to capture the reader’s attention and hold it for the rest of the novel that is often hard to put down. During her lifetime she wrote over 80 published works, over 65 of which were detective novels. It is important to really understand an author’s writings and what they mean. The only way to do this is to understand where they are coming from, and what has influenced their life.

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