446) Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (born Miller; 1890 – 1976). English writer. She is known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around her fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Christie also wrote the world's longest-running play, a murder mystery, The Mousetrap, and six romances under the name Mary Westmacott. In 1971 she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her contribution to literature.
Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly 2 billion copies, and her estate claims that her works come third in the rankings of the world's most-widely published books, behind only Shakespeare's works and the Bible. According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author, having been translated into at least 103 languages.

And Then There Were None is Christie's best-selling novel, with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery ever, and one of the best-selling books of all time. Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for longest initial run. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End on 25 November 1952, and as of September 2018 is still running after more than 27,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's highest honour, the Grand Master Award. In 2013, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 fellow writers of the Crime Writers' Association.

She was the first British woman surfing standing up, in Waikiki (Hawaii) in 1922.

She is the only mystery writer to be promoted Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire only for her literary works.

- "Her natural intelligence and red hair made her a favourite with the soldiers and doctors, and she soon advanced to the dispensary. Here, she learnt a knowledge of drugs and poisons, invaluable to her later writing career." https://www.history.co.uk/biographies/agatha-christie

 

- "The hair bothered me every time I saw it, because Agatha Christie was a redhead as a young woman, not a brunette." https://peschelpress.com/teresa-reviews-agatha-christie-a-life-in-pictures-2004/

- "I never knew that she was a flaming redhead or that her father was American." https://bookishbeck.wordpress.com/tag/agatha-christie/

 

 

Description of A. Christie published in the Daily News when the writer went missing in 1926