биография агаты кристи на английском краткая биография
Биография Агаты Кристи
Childhood and youth
Agatha Christie was a famous English writer. She was born on 15 September 1890 in Torquay, Devon. Her parents were wealthy US immigrants. Agatha was the youngest daughter in the family.
During World War I Agatha Christie worked as a hospital nurse. She liked it very much. First time she got married on Christmas Day (in 1914). Her husband Archibald Christie was an army officer. Five years later Agatha gave birth to their daughter Rosalind. This was the time when she started her career as a writer. In 1920 Agatha Christie published her first detective novel “The mysterious affair at Styles”.
In 1926 Agatha’s mother died, and soon after that her husband fell in love with another woman and asked for a divorce. In December 1926 Agatha Christie disappeared. She left a letter where she wrote that she was heading to Yorkshire. Nothing was known about her for 11 days. She didn’t explain her disappearance. In 1928 Archibald and Agatha divorced.
Second marriage and later years
In 1930 Agatha Christie went to Iraq. During that journey she met her future husband archaeologist Max Mallowan. Agatha Christie’s second husband was 15 years younger than her. They travelled together a lot. Agatha accompanied him on his trips to Iraq and Syria. Christie often used those settings for her new novels.
In 1971 her health became worse. There is an opinion that Agatha Christie suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Nevertheless, she kept on writing. Agatha Christie died on 12 January 1976 at her home in Wallingford (Oxfordshire).
Agatha Christie’s works
Christie published more than 60 detective novels, 6 psychological novels and 19 story collections. Her 16 plays have been staged in London.
The most famous works by Agatha Christie are “And then there were none”, “Murder on the Orient express”, “Poirot investigates”, “The man in the brown suit” and many others.
Биография Агаты Кристи на английском языке с переводом
Здесь вы можете прочитать биографию Агаты Кристи на английском языке с переводом на русский язык.
Agatha Christie (full name Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie) was a prominent English crime novelist and short story writer. She was also the author of the world’s longest play “The Mousetrap”. She was born on September 15th, 1890, in Torquay, Devon. She was the youngest child in the family of wealthy American settlers. She got excellent home education. With the start of the First World War, Agatha applied to work as a nurse at the hospital. She liked this occupation and found it rather useful. Later on, she worked as a pharmacist at the chemist’s and that influenced many of her stories. More than eighty crimes from her fiction were committed by poisoning.
In 1914, during Christmas time, Agatha married Colonel Archibald Christie, whom she admired for several years. They had a daughter Rosalind. This was the time when she seriously took up writing. In 1920, her first novel, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles”, was published. For the first time readers met a fictional character Hercule Poirot, who consequently appeared in many other Christie’s books. In 1926, her husband left her, as he was in love with another woman. After this case, she disappeared from the house and nobody could find her. This caused a loud public outcry, as the writer already had lots of fans. She was finally found two weeks later and diagnosed with amnesia. In 1928 Archibald and Agatha got divorced. Later, in her semi-autobiographical novel “Unfinished Portrait” she described the details of her disappearance.
Перевод:
В 1914 году, во время Рождества, Агата вышла замуж за полковника Арчибальда Кристи, которым восхищалась несколько лет. У них была дочь Розалинда. Это было время, когда она всерьез занялась сочинительством. В 1920 году был опубликован ее первый роман «Загадочное происшествие в Стайлзе». Впервые читатели познакомились с вымышленным персонажем Эркюлем Пуаро, который впоследствии появился во многих других книгах Кристи. В 1926 году ее бросил муж, так как был влюблен в другую женщину. После этого случая она исчезла из дому, и никто не мог ее найти. Это вызвало громкий общественный резонанс, так как у писательницы уже было много поклонников. Через две недели ее, наконец нашли, и диагностировали амнезию. В 1928 году Арчибальд и Агата развелись. Позже в своем полуавтобиографическом романе “Незаконченный портрет” она описала подробности своего исчезновения.
В 1930 году, она встретила своего второго мужа, Макса Маллована, который был гораздо моложе ее. Он был археологом, поэтому они проводили много времени в Ираке и Сирии. Эти экспедиции позже были описаны во многих ее рассказах. Она также написала автобиографию об этом периоде своей жизни «Расскажи, как ты живешь». В 1956 году талантливая писательница была награждена Орденом Британской империи за достижения в области литературы. Начиная с 1971 года, ее здоровье стало постепенно ухудшаться, тем не менее, она продолжала писать. Она умерла 12 января 1976 года, после непродолжительной простуды. Внук Агаты Кристи, Мэтью Причард, унаследовал права на некоторые ее литературные произведения, в том числе на ее самую успешную пьесу “Мышеловка”.
Agatha Christie. The Biography (in English)
Agatha Christie (September 15, 1890 – January 12, 1976)
The biography of Agatha Christie is adapted for an intermediate level. You can also read her biorgaphy in Russian.– Agatha Christie. The Biography (in Russian)
You will find all books by Agatha Christie on the website englishstory.ru in English and in Russian.
Agatha Christie is a very well-known woman writer. During her 86 years she wrote 78 detective stories, 150 short stories and 19 plays. Her books are published in 104 languages. They are sold in the third place after Shakespeare and the Bible.
But what kind of person was she? If you ask yourself this question, read the biography of Agatha Christie and you will get to know some interesting fact about her life and literary career.
Agatha Christie. The Biography (in English)
Words to understand:
Part 1. Famous and Strange
Let us start with her character. It was strange that being so famous, she didn’t like it, on the contrary she avoided publicity and never gave speeches in public. By nature Agatha Christie was a very shy and reserved person and only close people could understand her complex personality.
In her childhood Agatha Christie was kind of slow-witted and hardly could express her feelings. When her mother noticed this strange peculiarity of her daughter’s character, she tried to get her into music. It worked. She played the piano very well but for the same reason she would never become a professional pianist. Even small audiences made Christie freeze up when playing the piano.
Growing older she didn’t change. The incident that happened to her at the age of 72 proves that fact. In 1962 she was invited to a party organized in her honor. It was the celebration of the 10th anniversary of her play “The Mousetrap”, which took place in London, in Savoy Hotel. But when the doorman, not knowing her personally, refused to let her in, Agatha Christie just sadly turned away and went home. As the guest of honor didn’t appear, the party was a failure. It is believed that Christie may have suffered from a chronic form of a mental disorder, called agoraphobia. This illness creates a great fear of public places.
Part 2. Adventurous and Brilliant
Christie was born in an upper class family at Torquay, Devonshire. All her childhood she spent in a large villa on the English seashore. She was very happy as a child.
Little Agatha was allowed to do what she wanted and she often amazed family with her actions. Once, at a very young age, she persuaded her brother to go out to sea on a sailboat. At the age of 6, she climbed out the 4th floor window and walked along the foot-wide ledge.
In 1911, at the age of 21, she went up in an airplane, which was a new invention for that time. Despite her public shyness, Agatha was adventurous and brave.
Agatha got home education, which was common for the young women during the Victorian era. Agatha was a brilliant pupil, she demonstrated excellent abilities in mathematics, logic, and music. Later her mother sent her to Paris to take singing lessons. But Agatha didn’t have friends and was often lonely. Having nobody to speak to, she talked… to trees in her garden and the imaginary creatures who lived in it.
When Agatha grew up and turned into a tall slim blonde. Young men found her very charming and she had had many admirers before she finally married. She started writing stories at a young age competing with her mother, who also had such a hobby. When Agatha’s father died at an early age, the family got into money difficulties. And Agatha thought that she would earn money for her family, writing books. She signed her first publishing contract at the age of 29. As a result she became a famous writer, who knows whether it would be possible in other circumstances.
Part 3. Married and Divorced
Agatha married Archie Christie in 1914 and took his last name. Twelve years she lived rather happily but in the year of 1926 the misfortune started. First Agatha’s mother died. Hardly could she recover from her grief, the same year her husband announced that he was going to divorce her and marry their mutual friend, Nancy Neele. Agatha went through a bitter divorce and, as a result, became very depressed and mentally exhausted. These two events influenced her greatly and soon after that she disappeared. Her car was found outside London and the police started searching the ponds for her body but 11 days later she was discovered staying at a hotel in the north of England, under the name of Teresa Neele.
She said that she remembered nothing only that she had been in a car accident, though there was no any sign of damage to her car. The doctors suggested that she had an amnesia but everybody thought that it was a lie. The last name Neele that she had used in the hotel appeared on the front pages of every newspaper in England. It was the name of the woman that her husband wanted to marry.
Christie didn’t like to remember that incident, and it only increased her hatred for the press for the rest of her life.
Despite the divorce, Agatha Christie was still the center of attention with men. And, at the age of 40, Agatha married Macmillian Mallown, who was 15 years younger than she. This marriage appeared to be arranged in heaven. They were madly happy. Her second husband adored her and they spent almost every day together. He was an archeologist and Agatha followed him to Egypt and other countries, helping him to arrange artefacts and make excavations. She was very worried that she would probably die earlier and it really happened. He lived rather lonely till the end of his life.
Part 4. The Secret of Christie’s Popularity
You still wonder why books by Agatha Christie have become so popular among many people of different nationalities? Here are some ideas.
First of all, she had a genius for constructing complex plots. She had no difficulties to find ideas for her novels. On the contrary, she would have 5 different stories in mind at the same time, and it took her much effort to concentrate on one of them.
Secondly, Christie had a genius to create her great detective Poirot in her first novel. He has became one of the most popular private detectives since Sherlock. He has an image of a funny little man, with an egghead and moustache. By the way, it is strange that Christie never mentioned his nation, his family and class.
Agatha Christie became well-known in 1926 after the publishing of her novel «The murder of Roger Acroyd». It is still considered her masterpiece. She was very creative and wrote at least one novel a year for the rest of her life. When Christie got tired of Poirot, she invented Miss Marple, an old lady with her own method of investigation.
The plots of her books always keep the reader in suspense because till the last page he cannot guess who the criminal is. Agatha Christie’s language is rather simple and language students are usually advised to read her books in the original.
Топик на английском языке с переводом «Биография Агаты Кристи»
Биография Агаты Кристи
Childhood and youth
Agatha Christie was a famous English writer. She was born on 15 September 1890 in Torquay, Devon. Her parents were wealthy US immigrants. Agatha was the youngest daughter in the family.
During World War I Agatha Christie worked as a hospital nurse. She liked it very much. First time she got married on Christmas Day (in 1914). Her husband Archibald Christie was an army officer. Five years later Agatha gave birth to their daughter Rosalind. This was the time when she started her career as a writer. In 1920 Agatha Christie published her first detective novel “The mysterious affair at Styles”.
In 1926 Agatha’s mother died, and soon after that her husband fell in love with another woman and asked for a divorce. In December 1926 Agatha Christie disappeared. She left a letter where she wrote that she was heading to Yorkshire. Nothing was known about her for 11 days. She didn’t explain her disappearance. In 1928 Archibald and Agatha divorced.
Second marriage and later years
In 1930 Agatha Christie went to Iraq. During that journey she met her future husband archaeologist Max Mallowan. Agatha Christie’s second husband was 15 years younger than her. They travelled together a lot. Agatha accompanied him on his trips to Iraq and Syria. Christie often used those settings for her new novels.
In 1971 her health became worse. There is an opinion that Agatha Christie suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Nevertheless, she kept on writing. Agatha Christie died on 12 January 1976 at her home in Wallingford (Oxfordshire).
Agatha Christie’s works
Christie published more than 60 detective novels, 6 psychological novels and 19 story collections. Her 16 plays have been staged in London.
The most famous works by Agatha Christie are “And then there were none”, “Murder on the Orient express”, “Poirot investigates”, “The man in the brown suit” and many others.
Детство и молодость
Агата Кристи – известная английская писательница. Она родилась 15 сентября 1890 года в городе Торки, графство Девон. Ее родители были состоятельными переселенцами из США. Агата была младшей дочерью в семье.
Во время Первой Мировой войны Агата Кристи работала медсестрой в госпитале. Ей нравилась эта работа. Первый раз она вышла замуж на Рождество (в 1914 году). Ее муж Арчибальд Кристи был армейским офицером. Через пять лет Агата родила дочь Розалинду. Этот период стал началом творческого пути. В 1920 году Агата Кристи опубликовала свой первый детективный роман «Таинственное происшествие в Стайлз».
В 1926 году умерла мать Агаты, а вскоре после этого ее муж полюбил другую женщину и попросил развод. В декабре 1926 года Агата Кристи исчезла. Она оставила письмо, в котором написала, что отправилась в Йоркшир. В течение 11 дней о ней ничего не было известно. Сама она не объяснила свое исчезновение. В 1928 году Арчибальд и Агата развелись.
Второе замужество и последние годы
В 1930 году Агата Кристи поехала в Ирак. В этом путешествии она познакомилась со своим будущим мужем – археологом Максом Маллоуэном. Второй муж Агаты Кристи был моложе ее на 15 лет. Они много путешествовали вместе. Агата сопровождала мужа в поездках по Сирии и Ираку. Часто местом действия ее новых романов становились эти места.
В 1971 году ее здоровье стало ухудшаться. Существует мнение, что Агата Кристи страдала болезнью Альцгеймера. Тем не менее, она продолжала писать. Умерла Агата Кристи 12 января 1976 года у себя дома в городе Уоллингфорд (Оксфордшир).
Произведения Агаты Кристи
Кристи опубликовала более 60 детективных романов, 6 психологических романов и 19 сборников рассказов. 16 ее пьес были поставлены в Лондоне.
К самым известным произведениям Агаты Кристи относятся «Десять негритят», «Убийство в «Восточном Экспрессе», «Пуаро ведет следствие», «Человек в коричневом костюме» и многие другие.
Biography Online
Agatha Christie Biography
Agatha Christie (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer of crime and romantic novels. She is best remembered for her detective stories including the two diverse characters of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. She is considered to be the best selling writer of all time. Only the Bible is known to have outstripped her collected sales of roughly four billion worldwide copies. Her works have been translated into more languages than any other individual writer.
Early life
Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, Devon 1890 to Clarissa Margaret Boehmer and a wealthy American stockbroker. She said her father was a most agreeable man “but (he) was a gentleman of substance and never did a handsturn in his life.” She received little formal education and was brought up by both her mother and her sister. She did have access to many books and became an avid reader. She recalls her childhood days with fondness.
“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood. I had a very happy childhood. I had a home and a garden that I loved; a wise and patient Nanny; as father and mother two people who loved each other dearly and made a success of their marriage and of parenthood.” A. Christie Autobiography
In 1905, she went to Paris where she was educated at finishing schools and hoped to become a singer, however, she realised that her voice was not strong enough to make it a career. She experimented with writing short novels, but not much came of it. She approached several publishers but, in the period before the First World War, received several rejections.
In 1914, Agatha Christie met Archibald Christie an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps – they married a few months after the outbreak of war in December 1914. They had a child, Rosalind in August 1919.
During the First World war, with her husband away in France, she trained and worked as a nurse helping to treat wounded soldiers. She also became educated in the field of pharmacy. She recalled her time as a nurse with great fondness, saying it was one of the most rewarding jobs she ever undertook.
Writing Career of Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie was first published in 1920. Her first book was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, (1920) which featured the detective – Hercule Poirot, who at the time was portrayed as a Belgian refugee from the Great War. Poirot is one of the most recognised fictional characters in English with his mixture of personal pride, broken English and immaculate appearance and moustache. The book sold reasonably well and helped meet the public’s great appetite for detective novels. It was a genre that had been popularised through Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories at the turn of the century. In 1926, she made her big breakthrough with the publication of “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.” This became a best-seller and made Christie famous as a writer.
Mysterious disappearance
“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.” – Foreward to Autobiography
In the same year (1926) as her major breakthrough, Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days. It became national headline news as the whole country became absorbed in the mystery of where she had disappeared to. After much-publicised efforts, she was discovered eleven days later in a Harrogate hotel living under a false name. She appeared to be suffering from amnesia. Agatha Christie herself never gave a full explanation for those 11 days, preferring to ignore the subject.
However, it may have been partly due to her turbulent marriage. She frequently rowed with her husband, and in that year discovered he was having an affair. Also, she had recently lost her mother, to whom she was very close. In a way, the drama of her disappearance increased her profile as a writer of fiction.
After the affair, with created negative publicity towards her, she travelled to the Canary Islands for recuperation. In 1930, she married her second husband, Max Mallowan. This marriage was happier, though her only child, Rosalind Hicks, came from her first marriage. Her second husband Max Mallowan was an archaeologist and she often accompanied him on trips to the Middle East. She learnt to help in archaeological digs, taking photographs and working on the sites. Christie paid her own way and tried to keep out of the limelight, working anonymously.
Writings of Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie wrote over 40 novels featuring the proud and immaculate Hercule Poirot. Like Conan Doyle, Christie had no great love for her own creation – Poirot seemed to be admired by the public more than the writer herself. Also, she was similarly unenthused by Poirot’s foil – Captain Hastings. Christie felt he was a rather underdeveloped character, but the public loved him.
Agatha Christie preferred her other great detective – the quiet but effective old lady – Miss Marple, who used to solve crimes through her intricate knowledge of how people in English villages behave. The character of Miss Marple was based on the traditional English country lady – and her own relatives. In later life, she increasingly preferred Miss Marple to Poirot.
The plot of Agatha Christies novels could be described as formulaic. Murders were committed by ingenious methods – often involving poison, which Agatha Christie had great knowledge of. After interrogating all the main suspects, the detective would bring all the participants into some drawing-room before explaining who was the murderer. Her writing was quite clear and it is easy to get absorbed in the flow of the story. It also gave readers the chance to try and work out who the murderer was before it was revealed at the end.
Agatha Christie enjoyed writing. For her there was great satisfaction in creating plots and stories. She also wrote six novels in the genre of romance and suspense under a pseudonym – Mary Westmacott.
During the Second World War, Christie worked in the pharmacy of the University College London, which gave her ideas for some of her murder methods. After the war, her books continued to grow in international popularity. In 1952, her play The Mousetrap was debuted at the Ambassador’s Theatre in London and has been performed without a break ever since. Her success led to her being honoured in the New Year’s honour list. In 1971 she was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire.
Personal life
Agatha Christie loved embroidery, travelling and gardening – she won various horticultural prizes. She expressed a dislike of alcohol, smoking and the gramophone. She preferred to avoid the limelight and rarely gave public interviews. To some extent she hankered after the more idyllic days of Edwardian England she experienced in her childhood and was dubious about aspects of modern life.
Religious views
Agatha Christie was baptised in the Anglican Church and remained a Christian throughout her life, though she went through periods of difficulty. She was very close to her mother, who was a practising Christian but also was willing to experiment in following practices of Catholocism and spiritualism. Agatha and her other siblings believed that her mother had a degree of psychic ability. Her own writings are not explicitly Christian, but generally have a theme of justice with the sinners unable to escape the consequences of their bad actions, and the moral universe restored. She kept her mother’s copy of “Imitation of Christ” by Thomas à Kempis – close to her bed. In her own autobiography, she writes about her own awareness and interest in the inner spiritual sense.
“We never know the whole man, though sometimes, in quick flashes, we know the true man. I think, myself, that one’s memories represent those moments which, insignificant as they may seem, nevertheless represent the inner self and oneself as most really oneself.” – A. Christie
She died in 1976 aged 85 from natural causes, though may have experienced some dementia in her final years.
Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “Biography of Agatha Christie”, Oxford, www.biographyonline.net Last updated 18 March 2020. Originally published 5 February 2013.
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