The Adventure Company today released 75 Facts About the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie to celebrate the upcoming release of the first-ever videogame based on the works of Dame Agatha. Here are a few of the fascinating facts:
1. According to the Guinness Book of Records, Agatha Christie is the best-selling fiction author of all time with an estimated two billion copies of her books in print. By comparison, around 270 million copies of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books have been sold.
2. Agatha is the most-translated fiction author in the world, according to the UNESCO. Her work has been translated into more than 70 languages. It is often said that she is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare.
3. She wrote 80 novels and short story collections and 19 plays. She also wrote two books of poetry, a children's book, and two autobiographical works.
4. Agatha penned six romance novels under the name of Mary Westmacott. This pseudonym remained a secret for almost 20 years until her nom de plume was revealed by the Sunday Times.
5. On average 97 per cent of adults in the UK know of Agatha Christie and one third have read at least one Christie novel; more than half have seen a Christie film.
6. Agatha managed to write an average of two novels a year through her working life.
7. For many years she set and corrected an essay competition for pupils of a local school.
8. She remains the most borrowed mystery author from Britain's public libraries and ranks as one of the top10 most borrowed authors, clocking up more than 12 million loans in the past ten years.
9. She is also the nation's favorite spoken book author. In 2002, 117,696 Christie audiobooks were sold, compared to 97,755 for JK Rowling, 78,770 for Roald Dahl and 75,841 for JRR Tolkein.
10. In 2000 Agatha Christie was voted Best Writer of the 20th Century and her Poirot books were named Best Series of the Century at the 31st Boucheron World Mystery Convention.
11. Her most famous play, The Mousetrap, is the longest continuously running play of all time, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on November 25, 1952. It moved next door to the St. Martin's Theatre on March 25, 1974, not missing a single performance. It continues to this day. It was originally written as a 20-minute radio drama, commissioned by the BBC to celebrate the 80th birthday of Queen Mary.
We love Dame Agatha. We recall reading in her autobiography how much work she thought writing was. She said that sometimes she could only keep going by reminding herself of how overdrawn she was at the bank. Practical, self-effacing and enormously talented. That was Agatha Christie.
