Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Olive Snell |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Autobiography |
| Publisher | Collins |
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Publication date
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November 1977 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 544 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 3473421 |
| 823/.9/12 B | |
| LC Class | PR6005.H66 Z512 1977b |
| Preceded by | Sleeping Murder |
| Followed by | Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories |
An Autobiography is the title of the recollections of crime writer Agatha Christie published posthumously by Collins in the UK and by Dodd, Mead & Company in the US in November 1977, almost two years after the writer's death in January 1976. The UK edition retailed at £7.95 and the US edition at $15.00. It is by some considerable margin the longest of her works, the UK first edition running to 544 pages. It was translated and published in Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish.
Christie provides a foreword and an epilogue to the book in which she very clearly states the beginning and end of the composition. The book was supposedly started on 2 April 1950 at the expedition house at Nimrud where she was working on the excavation of that ancient city with her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan. The narrative was then completed on 11 October 1965 at one of the Mallowan's homes, Winterbrook House in Wallingford, Berkshire where Christie's death occurred eleven years later. Collins included a preface to the book in which they admitted that repetitions and inconsistencies had been “tidied up” but they continued to impress on readers that the text had been composed over a fifteen-year period and was then left untouched by Christie for the remainder of her life. Christie's official biography revealed that the truth was more complicated and while many notes and short diaries had been made between 1950 and 1965, Christie's intention had been for a more ad-hoc series of smaller books in the style of the 1946 publication Come Tell Me How You Live (which concentrated fully on her life on one of her husband's digs and the personalities and events involved). In the early 1960s Christie was being approached more and more often for permission to write biographies of her, all such requests being firmly turned down. In February 1962 she informed her literary agent, Edmund Cork of Hughes Massie, that she did not want any account of her life written, but exactly three years later she seemed to recognise the inevitability of such works being composed and, determined to undercut such efforts, started work in earnest to bring her notes into a more cohesive narrative, although she remained determined that publication would not occur during her lifetime. The writing was finished by the end of 1966 with the draft being sent to Cork for his suggestions and a request for a copy to be typed for Christie's daughter Rosalind Hicks in order that she could offer her opinions.
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