What really happened the summer of 1980?
September 15th
Any list of the greatest novelists of the last one hundred years would be incomplete without this person on it. She wrote 66 novels and 14 collections of short stories and also the world’s longest running play, Mousetrap.
many books she has written
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on September 15, 1890. We know her as Agatha Christie. The Guinness World Records names her as the fiction author whose books have sold more than any other in history at over 2 billion copies. It’s the sort of success that aspiring novelists can only dream of.
Like most writers, it was a number of years after she began penning her stories before she was published. From the Infallible Wikipedia:
“At eighteen, Christie wrote her first short story, ‘The House of Beauty’, while recovering in bed from an illness. It consisted of about 6,000 words on ‘madness and dreams’, a subject of fascination for her. Her biographer, Janet Morgan, has commented that, despite ‘infelicities of style’, the story was ‘compelling’. (The story became an early version of her story ‘The House of Dreams’.) Other stories followed, most of them illustrating her interest in spiritualism and the paranormal. These included ‘The Call of Wings’ and ‘The Little Lonely God’. Magazines rejected all her early submissions, made under pseudonyms (including Mac Miller, Nathaniel Miller, and Sydney West); some submissions were later revised and published under her real name, often with new titles.
Around the same time, Christie began work on her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert. Writing under the pseudonym Monosyllaba, she set the book in Cairo and drew upon her recent experiences there. She was disappointed when the six publishers she contacted declined the work. Clara suggested that her daughter ask for advice from the successful novelist Eden Phillpotts, a family friend and neighbour, who responded to her enquiry, encouraged her writing, and sent her an introduction to his own literary agent, Hughes Massie, who also rejected Snow Upon the Desert but suggested a second novel.
(snip)
Christie had long been a fan of detective novels, having enjoyed Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and The Moonstone, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s early Sherlock Holmes stories. She wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1916. It featured Hercue Poirot a former Belgian police officer with ‘magnificent moustaches’ and a head ‘exactly the shape of an egg’, who had taken refuge in Britain after Germany invaded Belgium. Christie’s inspiration for the character came from Belgian refugees living in Torquay, and the Belgian soldiers she helped to treat as a volunteer nurse during the First World War. Her original manuscript was rejected by Hodder & Stoughton and Methuen. After keeping the submission for several months, John Lane at The Bodley Head offered to accept it, provided that Christie change how the solution was revealed. She did so, and signed a contract committing her next five books to The Bodley Head, which she later felt was exploitative.It was published in 1920.”
I did not realize that I wasn’t the only one who adhere’s to this philosophy!
Her personal life was not without strife. When her father died in 1902 – Christie was 11 years old – the family’s financial situation changed. As Christie later said that it marked the end of her childhood.
Despite this, she did manage to participate in British social life and had a number of short lived relationships prior to meeting Archie Christie when she was 22 years old. The two were married on Christmas Eve 1914.
The birth of her only child, a daughter, occurred in 1919. With the death of her mother in 1926 she fell into a deep depression. Two years later she and Archie divorced when he admitted to an extramarital affair.
She did eventually remarry in 1930 to archaeologist Max Mallowan – a marriage which lasted until her death in 1976.
The backdrop to her personal life, however, was always writing. She often incorporated her own experiences and places she’d visited into her novels.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this was her work in hospital dispensaries during both World Wars. While there she became familiar with a variety of poisons which found their way into her works. Christie had a real gift in finding creative ways to kill off her characters.
While I cannot recall exactly when I became aware of Christie’s books, I imagine it was probably as a young teenager. Undoubtedly I read a number of her novels but it was the 1974 movie Murder On the Orient Express which truly brought her works to the attention of countless Americans. I have enjoyed all the movies based on her books.
I also believe I saw Mousetrap in London in 1980. Unfortunately, my memory is fuzzy and I’m not sure if I imagined the whole thing. But it does seem as if I did attend the play. It was in mid-July and early August of 1980 when my parents had taken my sister and me on a three week trip to Norway, England, and Scotland.
Although we spent the first day in London, the next morning we flew to Bergen, Norway, and began a multi-day bus tour of that country, ending up in Olso. From there, it was fly back to England for car touring as my dad rented a vehicle and we drove up through the countryside to Scotland. After Edinburgh, we returned to London. It was there, on August 2nd, that I write a postcard to my fiancé as follows:
True to what I wrote, it was the final missive I sent. Did I or did I not attend Mousetrap? What was the cause of my malady? Was it truly food poisoning as I believed or had someone doctored my food? Was the ‘poison’ the source of my fuzzy memory? Agatha Christie would, no doubt, approve of such a storyline.
Alas, dear reader, forty years after the fact, it is a mystery which might never be solved. Sounds like the makings of a novel.
The link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie
September 12, 2022 – Update from original post in 2020: The mystery has been solved! Buried in a previously undiscovered box, I found the program from when we attended in 1980. Although it was the 25th year plus three, I still purchased it… for one pound!
Shakespeare, perhaps more than any person who has ever lived, was the most prolific of authors. He published 37 plays and 154 sonnets and today, 503 years after his death, his plays are still being performed and his written works analyzed and contemplated. Talk about staying power!
I would add to the ‘book’ as new adventures occurred, writing them down over the weekend, then bringing the updated story to school for the ‘real’ Deborah and Cynthia to read. In time some of the ‘boys’ and other peripheral characters – perhaps recognizing themselves in the story – also started to read the book. It was passed around like an annual at graduation for everyone to peruse.
“Born in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series while on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990. (snip)
In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher’s Stone with an initial print run of 1,000 copies, 500 of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 ($21,000 US) and £25,000 ($32,000 US). Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year, and later, the Children’s Book Award. In early 1998, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for US $105,000. Rowling said that she ‘nearly died’ when she heard the news. In October 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher’s Stone in the US under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, a change Rowling says she now regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time.”
Of course adding movies to the mix only served to enhance the experience. I think the high water mark for me was when, in 2009, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince came to the IMAX. I was working with the Rainbow Girls then and we took a group to see the movie. Imagine the girls’ surprise when I arrive for the event dressed up… just like the character Professor McGonagall. I made quite the stir when I walked into the theatre and one patron yelled at me from up above “Good to see you McGonagall!” Guess my costume worked.
uly 3. His nationally syndicated column ran from 1983 to 2005. Additionally, he’s written numerous books which highlight some of the more ridiculous aspects of modern American life.
In the course of incubating my own small human I had time to read the book. There was lots of humorous stuff between the pages and I laughed at much of it. At the time I thought he was exaggerating. It wasn’t until AFTER my son was born that I came to appreciate the truth in his whimsical look at parenthood and maybe, just maybe, he WASN’T making it up.
Sadly, she died December 28, 2017 and, according to her daughter, the final book will never be completed and the series ends with Y is for Yesterday.
The Alphabet Mystery series begins in 1982 with A is for Alibi. Also from Wikipedia:
Writer’s write and, despite the lack of a publisher, it’s what we are compelled to do. Sue Grafton was also compelled to write so a toast to her memory on her birthday and the gift Dishe left behind with those 25 alphabet books.
It took the author only six weeks to complete the novella which was published on December 19, 1843. All 6,000 of the original copies sold out in less than six days and the book, arguably, is one of the most famous literary works in history.
So, instead of a rehash, today’s topic involves one of my favorite authors. Born October 31, 1920, he wrote more than 40 novels in his lifetime. He did not begin his novel writing career until he was 40 years old. All of his books centered around the world of horseracing. That author: Dick Francis.
My favorite book of his is titled “Straight” and tells the story of a man who inherits his brother’s life when the latter dies in a freak accident. Francis was one of my mother’s favorite authors also. So beloved, in fact, that she collected all of his books which, perhaps, I will inherit one day.
to get through the event. The store manager brought him one glassful while I was there.
It is rare to find a writer whose impact on both children and adults is so pronounced but E.B. White – who was born on July 11, 1899 – was such a writer.
The book is one of the most widely read books by elementary aged children. Somewhere in a dusty box in my parent’s basement is a copy of this wonderful book. A book which I read over and over again, falling in love with a pig named Wilbur and his friend, the spider Charlotte.
Anyone who grew up in the 1960’s no doubt sees the names Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren and knows immediately that they were the gold standard in advice columnists. The two, also, were twin sisters born on July 4, 1918 in Sioux City, Iowa.
No doubt each could have penned letters seeking advice from Ann Landers and Dear Abby. From 1956 on their relationship with each other was strained. Reconciliation was attempted in 1964 but the competition between them persisted until Esther’s death in June 2002.
barbaradevore.com 