Anne Hart - Agatha Christie’s Marple

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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Revised edition published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2019

Copyright © Anne Hart 1985

Cover design by Andrew Davidson © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2019

AGATHA CHRISTIE®, MARPLE® and the Agatha Christie Signature are registered trademarks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere. All rights reserved.

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Anne Hart asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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Source ISBN: 9780008340285

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780007396566

Version: 2019-04-06

For a very dear aunt,

Anita Elliott Baird,

whom Miss Marple would have

enjoyed knowing

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication DEDICATION Dedication Preface 1 St Mary Mead 2 Miss Marple’s Earlier Life 3 Miss Marple’s Career Begins 4 The 1930s 5 Postwar Events 6 The Four Last Cases 7 The Essential Miss Marple 8 A Visit to Miss Marple 9 Miss Marple at Home 10 Miss Marple at Large 11 ‘My Nephew, the Author’ and Other Relatives and Friends 12 Little Maids All In a Row 13 Miss Marple as Sleuth A Miss Marple Bibliography Miss Marple Short Stories Miss Marple on Stage, Film, TV and Radio Keep Reading About the Author Also by Anne Hart About the Publisher For a very dear aunt, Anita Elliott Baird, whom Miss Marple would have enjoyed knowing

Preface

1 St Mary Mead

2 Miss Marple’s Earlier Life

3 Miss Marple’s Career Begins

4 The 1930s

5 Postwar Events

6 The Four Last Cases

7 The Essential Miss Marple

8 A Visit to Miss Marple

9 Miss Marple at Home

10 Miss Marple at Large

11 ‘My Nephew, the Author’ and Other Relatives and Friends

12 Little Maids All In a Row

13 Miss Marple as Sleuth

A Miss Marple Bibliography

Miss Marple Short Stories

Miss Marple on Stage, Film, TV and Radio

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by Anne Hart

About the Publisher

It has been a great pleasure to write this biography of Agatha Christie’s beloved and resilient Miss Marple, the best known of a notable group of women who have played leading roles in detective fiction. Of course, not a word of this book would have been written had not a benevolent genius created Miss Marple in the first place, and I am immensely grateful to Rosalind Hicks, Agatha Christie’s daughter, for giving her kind approval for my use of her mother’s writing in this way.

Unlike other biographers, I cannot claim to have unearthed new material. Everything we know of Miss Marple is contained in the twelve books and twenty short stories devoted to her remarkable sleuthing. To search through these books and stories, not for murderers but for clues to Miss Marple herself, is the aim of this biography. I hope its readers will enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Together we are indebted to the incomparable Agatha Christie.

I am grateful to a number of people who have encouraged me along the way. I would particularly like to thank Susan Hart, Nancy Grenville, David Grenville, and Percy Janes for their helpful advice on the manuscript, and June Mescia, my editor, for her suggestions and good judgment.

ANNE HART