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Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman

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Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman

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Overview

A new, fascinating account of the life of Agatha Christie from celebrated literary and cultural historian Lucy Worsley.

"Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was."

Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was “just” an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn’t? Her life is fascinating for its mysteries and its passions and, as Lucy Worsley says, "She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern." She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness.

So why—despite all the evidence to the contrary—did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?

She was born in 1890 into a world that had its own rules about what women could and couldn’t do. Lucy Worsley’s biography is not just of a massively, internationally successful writer. It's also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman.

With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley’s biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realize what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was—truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639362523
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	09/06/2022
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	29,908
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Lucy Worsley OBE is Chief Curator at the charity Historic Royal Palaces. She also presents history documentaries for the BBC. Her bestselling books include Queen Victoria; Jane Austen at Home; The Art of the English Murder; and If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home. In 2019, her BBC One program Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley won a BAFTA. She lives in England.

Preface: Hiding in Plain Sight xiii

Part 1 Victorian Girl - 1890s

1 The House Where I Was Born 3

2 Insanity in the Family 8

3 The Thing in the House 13

4 Ruined 20

Part 2 Edwardian Debutante - 1900s

5 Waiting for The Man 29

6 Best Victorian Lavatory 33

7 The Gezireh Palace Hotel 36

8 Enter Archibald 42

Part 3 Wartime Nurse - 1914-18

9 Torquay Town Hall 51

10 Love and Death 60

11 Enter Poirot 67

12 The Moorland Hotel 73

Part 4 Bright Young Author - 1920s

13 Enter London 79

14 Enter Rosalind 84

15 The British Mission 88

16 Thrillers 95

Part 5 1926

17 Sunningdale 107

18 The Mysterious Affair at Styles 114

19 Disappearance 123

20 The Harrogate Hydropathic Hotel 134

21 Reappearance 156

Part 6 Plutocratic Period - 1930s

22 Mesopotamia 173

23 Enter Max 182

24 I Think I Will Marry You 188

25 Eight Houses 197

26 The Golden Age 210

Part 7 Wartime Worker - 1940s

27 Beneath the Bombs 221

28 A Daughter's a Daughter 232

29 Life Is Rather Complicated 243

30 By Mary Westmacott 253

Part 8 Taken at the Flood - 1950s

31 A Big Expensive Dream 263

32 They Came to Baghdad 270

33 Christie-Land after the War 280

34 Second Row in the Stalls 289

35 A Charming Grandmother 297

Part 9 Not Swinging - 1960s

36 The Mystery of the Christie Fortune 305

37 A Queer Lot 315

38 Lady Detectives 324

39 To Know When to Go 330

Part 10 Curtain - 1970s

40 Winterbrook 337

41 After the Funeral 348

Sources 357

Acknowledgements 365

Notes 367

Index 399

Picture Acknowledgements 415

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/11/2022
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) was a modernist, an iconoclast, and a groundbreaker, according to this excellent biography from historian Worsley (The Austen Girls). Worsley argues that Christie’s public image as a quiet Edwardian lady who happens to scribble mysteries was a “carefully crafted” persona, made in order to “conceal her real self” and her unconventional and oft-daring life: she threw herself into nursing work and archeological digs, was a divorced single mother, married a much younger man, loved fast cars, and built an extraordinary career. Born into a well-off family, Christie was a child full of joy who grew up to create a “character in which she could do what she wanted” and rally against the “restrictive social customs” forced upon upper-middle-class women. Worsley offers close readings of Christie’s work, including the spinster character Miss Marple, who may have “stood for Agatha’s own self.” As well, she presents a careful reframe of the novelist’s famous 1926 disappearance, positioning it as a turning point in which she “lost her way of life and her sense of self,” rather than the media-constructed narrative that it was a “jealous... attention-seeking” move. Drawing on personal letters and modern criticism, Worsley manages to make her subject feel fresh and new. This is a must-read for Christie fans. Photos. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Presenting Christie as living a ‘modern life,’ firmly in and ‘of her time’ is Dr. Worsley’s key aim: neither nostalgic nor part of the heritage industry. She succeeds brilliantly, for the Agatha Chirstie (woman and author) that emerges from this astute and, at times, justifiably compassionate book is anything but cosy.

Country Life (UK)

Advance Praise for Agatha Christie: A Hidden Life:

From the Publisher

"Lucy Worsley brings Agatha Christie back to life, revealing a strong, pioneering, highly intelligent woman whose detective novels rank among the best ever written. Worsley shows us Christie's faults and flaws in the context of her time; she evokes her houses, clothes and the central mystery of her life in spritely sentences with a sharp ear for dialogue. Reading Worsley is as enjoyable as reading Christie herself."

Ruth Scurr

"This is a warm, intelligent book that does justice both to Agatha Christie's character and to her distinctive genius as a writer of plays and novels. Someone once said that the greatest character Agatha Christie ever invented was Agatha Christie herself. If that's true, she was waiting for the perfect biographer to bring her back to life, and she has found her in Dr. Lucy Worsley."

A. N. Wilson

"Lucy Worsley's biography of Agatha Christie is as unputdownable as any of the novels by the Queen of Crime herself. Gripping, revealing, and ultimately extremely moving, Agatha Christie is a wonderful tribute to one of the best-loved writers of the twentieth century."

Amanda Foreman

"One brilliant woman writing about another: an irresistible combination."

Antonia Fraser

07/01/2022
Who was the real Agatha Christie? While hugely prolific and successful—she is considered to be one of the world's most-read authors—Christie would often describe herself as a housewife. British historian and BBC presenter Worsley (Jane Austen at Home), in this careful consideration of Christie's life, argues that few truly knew her. Born into a privileged family that later fell into straitened circumstances, Christie was a true product of her social class. However, Worsley argues, the expected trajectory of Christie's life was disrupted several times—by World War I; by a job in a pharmacy (which informed the novelist's encyclopedic knowledge of poisons); and by an impulsive marriage to war hero Archie Christie—culminating in Agatha's 10-day disappearance in 1926. In the ensuing media storm, speculation regarding her motives—much of it salacious—was rife. Worsley provides a welcome and objective addition to the Christie record; her conscientious examination of previous Christie studies, especially regarding the events of 1926, reveals much of the earlier reporting to have been inaccurate and unfair. Worsley argues that the real Christie is in the text. VERDICT Worsley's thoughtful and generous contribution to the Christie biographical canon will be welcomed and enjoyed by Agatha Christie fans.—Penelope J.M. Klein

Library Journal

★ 2022-06-01
The queen of suspense gets the royal treatment.
British historian Worsley comes up with another winner in this sprightly, endearing biography. Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was elusive, Worsley argues, because she “deliberately played upon the fact that she seemed so ordinary.” In 1914, she married Archibald Christie and wrote while raising her daughter. Her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, starred a Belgian refugee, the “egg-headed Hercule Poirot with his ridiculous moustache.” Worsley also shows how Christie took care to create narratives that put “the lives of women centre stage” as well as how her personal experiences informed her work: “Everything Agatha experienced became copy.” For example, she worked at a hospital pharmacy and learned about poisons, which she used to great effect in her books. A smart and savvy author, she wrote in various genres to learn which sold best. One of Christie’s gifts, writes Worsley, was to “democratise the Gothic, making it appealing to the mass market.” While building a devoted audience, she was also breaking new ground. The revolutionary Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Worsley writes, is “one of the greatest detective novels of all time.” After 1926, when she disappeared for days following her discovery of her husband’s infidelity, her novels “would firmly address dark, uncomfortable feelings.” Vacationing in Iraq after her divorce, she met young archaeologist Max Mallowan and married him. Worsley argues convincingly that the 1930s were Christie’s most productive years. During that time, she introduced new characters, including Miss Marple, and wrote plays. In 1946, she contributed a new play, Three Blind Mice (later reworked as The Mousetrap), for Queen Mary’s 80th birthday. Despite her massive popularity, she remained an “unusually publicity-shy celebrity” even as her stories, which often became films, began to reach new audiences. Throughout, Worsley takes us behind the scenes to reveal classic “Christie tricks” from her books.
With great affection, Worsley masterfully maneuvers her way through Christie’s life and prolific oeuvre.

Kirkus Reviews

"In the best biography of Agatha Christie ever written, Lucy Worsley gets to the soul—the complex, troubled, but big soul—of our greatest whodunnit writer with laser-like precision. There will not now need to be another biography of the queen of the detective story written for decades."

Andrew Roberts

Presenting Christie as living a ‘modern life,’ firmly in and ‘of her time’ is Dr. Worsley’s key aim: neither nostalgic nor part of the heritage industry. She succeeds brilliantly, for the Agatha Chirstie (woman and author) that emerges from this astute and, at times, justifiably compassionate book is anything but cosy.

Country Life (UK)

Worsley's narration is crisp and clear, convincingly authoritative and vividly entertaining. In this production, as in her historical television programs, Worsley exhibits a quixotic sense of humor and demonstrates a zest for her subject.

AudioFile

Writer, historian, and television personality Lucy Worsley narrates her comprehensive biography about the world's most popular crime novelist, Agatha Christie. Listeners will hear many illuminating details about this elusive mystery icon. The biography follows all 85 years of Christie’s life—from her privileged childhood to her years married to the handsome but unfaithful and unreliable Archie Christie to her last 40 years married to the kindly, albeit pedantic, Max Mallowan. Worsley's narration is crisp and clear, convincingly authoritative and vividly entertaining. In this production, as in her historical television programs, Worsley exhibits a quixotic sense of humor and demonstrates a zest for her subject. D.L.G. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

Writer, historian, and television personality Lucy Worsley narrates her comprehensive biography about the world's most popular crime novelist, Agatha Christie. Listeners will hear many illuminating details about this elusive mystery icon. The biography follows all 85 years of Christie’s life—from her privileged childhood to her years married to the handsome but unfaithful and unreliable Archie Christie to her last 40 years married to the kindly, albeit pedantic, Max Mallowan. Worsley's narration is crisp and clear, convincingly authoritative and vividly entertaining. In this production, as in her historical television programs, Worsley exhibits a quixotic sense of humor and demonstrates a zest for her subject. D.L.G. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman

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