Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time. In a career that spanned more than fifty years, Christie wrote eighty novels and short story collections, nineteen plays- one of which, The Mousetrap, is the longest running play in history- and five nonfiction books including her autobiography. In addition, she wrote six romantic novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Two of the characters she created, the ingenious Belgian Hercule Poirot and the irrepressible and relentless Miss Jane Marple, became world-famous detectives, immortalized on television by David Suchet and Joan Hickson.

Agatha Christie achieved Britain’s highest honor when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976.