Agatha Christie and her

influence in literature

Agatha Christie is a name that has traveled the world, thanks to her special characters who have charmed the audience since their first appearance. She is considered to be one of the best writers of all time and a queen of mysteries. However, few know her past and her contribution in literature, which is what we will discuss in today's article.

. Agatha's life

Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was born on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, a town in Devon. She came from a middle class family, having a happy childhood, until the age of eleven, when her father died of natural causes. The writer said that this had been the moment when she began to grow up and turn into the person we know today.


Clara, her mother, was a little more conservative . She hadn't let Agatha go to school, because she thought it would be better if Christie would study from home. This did not create a problem for the little writer, actually it gave her more time to read and write, ending at the age of ten with an entire poem created by her, called "The Cowslip".


Even though Agatha was in love with literature since she was a child, she did not find the courage to write an entire book , until her sister, Madge, dared her. The great mystery writer had begun with romance novels, written six novels under the alias Mary Westmacott. However, it didn't take long for the Belgian detective to appear and make readers fall in love with him.


Now, if you're a reader of hers, you probably know that all her crime stories revolve around poisoning, that's because in the past she worked at a dispensary. There she had accumulated pharmaceutical information which made the stories seem much more real. This sends us to the next category:

. The influence of Agatha in literature

Mystery is a genre of literature whose stories focus on a puzzling crime, situation or circumstance that needs to be solved. Over the past decades, it has become one of the most popular due to the range of sensations it offers. The readers of this genre are penetrated by pure emotion caused by the complexity of the mystery that keeps them in suspense. This type of reading develops a reader's senses through the way you keep him captivated. They are interested both in the manner in which the crime took place and in its perpetrator.


Agatha Christie or else said “The Queen of Crime” is the symbol of the mystery genre. We know that, you know that, the entire world of readers knows that. But have you ever wondered what makes her and her writing style so valuable and popular? After all, she is the best of the best when it comes down to mysteries.


She had kept this a secret, but the key to her mastery revolves around three essential factors: intriguing characters, influence, the concept of the “murder mystery”. Apart from that, her popularity was mainly generated by her writing style and the fact that she took inspiration for her books from her daily life really took her novels to a whole new level as against the previous ones written by Edgar Allan Poe or Arthur Canon Doyle. Main characters, suspects, and even victims that starred in her bestsellers were almost exclusively taken from real people that Christie knew or had seen.


She has also been the one that through her writings had created the idea of trapping all of her characters in one location and thought of having her detective go around and connect the suspects one by one.


At the end of the day, we can certainly say that Agatha Christie has not only defined what it looks like to write a good mystery, but has marked the mystery genre forevermore.



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editorial: Andreea Seba and Irina Aldescu

graphic design: Mihaela Filipescu

translation: Andreea Seba and Irina Aldescu

DP (desktop publishing): Mihaela Filipescu