Miss Marple

Miss Jane Marple
Illustration by Gilbert Wilkinson of Miss Marple (December 1927 issue of The Royal Magazine)
First appearance	"The Tuesday Night Club"
Last appearance	Sleeping Murder
Created by	Agatha Christie
Portrayed by	Gracie Fields Margaret Rutherford Angela Lansbury Dulcie Gray Helen Hayes Ita Ever Joan Hickson Geraldine McEwan June Whitfield Julia McKenzie Isabella Parriss (playing young Miss Marple) Julie Cox (playing Miss Marple as a young woman.)
Information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Amateur detective
Title	Miss
Family	Raymond West (nephew) David West (great-nephew) Lionel West (great-nephew)
Relatives	Joan West (niece-in-law) Mabel Denham (niece) Henry (uncle) Antony (cousin) Gordon (cousin) Fanny Godfrey (cousin) Lady Ethel Merridew (cousin) Thomas (uncle) Helen (aunt) Diane 'Bunch' Harmon (goddaughter)
Religion	Church of England (Christian)
Nationality	British

Jane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in 12 of Agatha Christie's crime novels and in 20 short stories. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Alongside Hercule Poirot, she is one of the most loved and famous of Christie's characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927, "The Tuesday Night Club", which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930.

The character of Miss Marple is based on Christie's step grandmother, or her Aunt (Margaret West), and her cronies. Agatha Christie attributed the inspiration for the character of Miss Marple to a number of sources, stating that Miss Marple was "the sort of old lady who would have been rather like some of my step grandmother's Ealing cronies – old ladies whom I have met in so many villages where I have gone to stay as a girl". Christie also used material from her fictional creation, spinster Caroline Sheppard, who appeared in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. When Michael Morton adapted the novel for the stage, he replaced the character of Caroline with a young girl. This change saddened Christie and she determined to give old maids a voice: Miss Marple was born.

There is no definitive source for the derivation of the name 'Marple'. The most common explanation is that the name was taken from Marple railway station in , through which Christie passed. Alternatively, Christie may have taken the name from a family named Marple, who lived at Marple Hall near her sister Madge's home at Abney Hall.