How did Agatha Christie become a writer?
Have you often thought you might like to become a writer? Perhaps you have read many detective and crime novels and are inspired by their intriguing plots. Agatha Christie was a very creative child and talked about her very happy childhood which encouraged her imagination. She loved to make up stories as a young girl at her home called Ashfield in Torquay.
When she became a voluntary nurse in World War I she wrote a little magazine alongside her colleagues, which was lighthearted and fun and all about their work. Around that time her older sister Madge encouraged Agatha to write a detective novel, as she knew how much Agatha enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. She challenged Agatha to write a book where the reader could not guess the murderer!
But it wasn’t straight forward and Agatha’s initial book was rejected by several different publishers. But she kept going and her very first book was written on Dartmoor here in Devon, called the Mysterious Affair at Styles.
Success really came with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and if you have not read a book by Agatha Christie yet, then maybe this is the one for you. See if you can work it out…
Did You Know that Agatha Christie studied abroad? She went to a finishing school in Paris when she was approximately fifteen or sixteen. She became fluent in French and she was able to use her talents when she met some Belgian refugees in Torquay. Among them was a retired Belgian police detective, I wonder who he inspired..!