Agatha Christie Context Flashcards
- What did Agatha Christie do during the war?
2. How successful have her novels been?
- Wartime hospital worker
2. Became best-selling novelist of all time (2bn sold)
- What position in the Order of Chivalry did Christie achieve?
- What was her first novel?
- Dame, Commander of the Order of the British Empire
2. ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ (1920); introduced Belgian detective Hercule Poirot
When was the first Miss Marple detective novel published?
Ten years after Poirot was introduced in ‘Styles’, The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) did same for English spinster detective Miss Marple.
What was Christie’s most risky novel?
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1936)- ‘threatened the whole basis of the genre’. Later novel A Murder is Announced (1950) departed from some of the certainties of the form.
According to Martin Priestman, in ‘Crime Fiction from Poe to Present’, what is the significance of a murder during a gathering in Christie’s novel?
‘A murder during a gathering at a country house provides enough intertwined characters with enough possible motives to fill a novel.’
According to Martin Priestman, in ‘Crime Fiction from Poe to Present’, what political and social leaning did Chrisite’s novels have?
‘The social vision of Christie’s novels is, famously, very conservative […] country houses and / or upper-middle-class village communities.’
According to Martin Priestman, in ‘Crime Fiction from Poe to Present’, what should Christie’s suspects have to maintain the reader’s interest?
‘To maintain interest in them, it is important that each suspect should have, or appear to have, something to hide.’
