The Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie

by Mary Anna Evans (Editor), J.C. Bernthal (Editor)

Overview

Nominated for the 2023 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Critical / Biography

The first specifically academic companion to contemporary scholarship on the work of Agatha Christie, this book includes chapters by an international group of scholars writing on topics and fields of study as various as ecocriticism and the anthropocene, popular modernism, middlebrow fiction, queer theory, feminism, crime and the state, and more. It addresses a broad selection of Christie's crime novels, as well as her short stories, literary novels written pseudonymously, and her own and others' dramatic adaptations for television, film, and the stage. Featuring unprecedented access to images and content held in Christie's personal archive, as well as a Foreword from renowned crime fiction writer Val McDermid, this is essential reading for anyone interested in Christie's work and legacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350212473
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	10/06/2022
Series:	Bloomsbury Handbooks
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Mary Anna Evans is an Associate Professor of Professional Writing at the University of Oklahoma, USA. Her fifteen crime novels have received recognition including the Benjamin Franklin Award, the Oklahoma Book Award, and a Will Rogers Medallion Award gold medal. Her work has appeared in publications including Feminist Studies, Clues: A Journal of Detection, The Atlantic, The Louisville Review, and CrimeReads.

J.C. Bernthal is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Suffolk. He is the author of Queering Agatha Christie (2016) and Agatha Christie: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction (2022). He has previously edited The Ageless Agatha Christie (2016) and, with Rebecca Mills, Agatha Christie Goes to War (2020). In 2020, he received the Popular Culture Association's George N. Dove Award for encouraging the serious study of crime fiction.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Foreword - Val McDermid

PART ONE: AGATHA CHRISTIE, THE WOMAN AND THE WRITER

Introduction, and a Chronology - Mary Anna Evans and J.C. Bernthal

My Grandmother, Agatha Christie - Mathew Prichard

PART TWO: CRITICAL APPROACHES

“The Creative Impulse” and the Middlebrow Woman Detective Author - Rebecca Mills

Christie's Clues as Information - Michelle M. Kazmer

Reading Agatha Christie Through A Feminist Lens - Mary Anna Evans

Queer Clues to Christie - J.C. Bernthal

Anthropocene and Archetype: Christie Does Ecocriticism - Susan Rowland

The Fabulous Flapper: Psychogeography and the Female Detective - Sarah Martin

Beit Agatha: Reading the Contemporary Middle East in Agatha Christie's Novels - Nadia Atia

PART THREE – CHRISTIE AND SOCIETY
Christie and the Carnage of War - J.C. Bernthal

Of Race, Law, and Order: Colonial Ghosts in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None - Meta G. Carstarphen

Agatha Christie and the State - Mary Evans

House and Home: The Country House - Brittain Bright

Agatha Christie, The Law, and Justice - Mary Anna Evans

Christie and Christianity - J.C. Bernthal

Weapon of Choice: Poison, Christie, and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction - Kathryn Harkup

PART FOUR — BEYOND THE CRIME NOVELS

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Mary Westmacott Novels - Merja Makinen

Christie's Radio Broadcasts for the BBC - Vike Martina Plock

“A Glorious Gamble”: Agatha Christie and the Theater - Benedict Morrison

Film and Television Adaptations of Agatha Christie - Mark Aldridge

Legacies - Barbara Peters, with Martin Edwards, Rhys Bowen, Ragnar Jónasson, and L. Alison Heller

List of Plates

List of Figures

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Editorial Reviews

With well-established approaches to Christie alongside hitherto understudied or new(er) approaches, the Handbook can serve as a starting point into Christie Studies, while it also presents innovative interpretations and an impressive amount of thorough research to non-newcomers to Christie.” —English Studies

“A thought provoking and stimulating read.” —Cross-Examining Crime

“Long known as crime fiction's best-seller and finest puzzler, Agatha Christie has recently been also recognized as a real social analyst. In The Bloomsbury Handbook twenty-one experts, including Val McDermid, give intriguingly varied accounts of Christie the world-aware searching novelist.” —Stephen Knight, Honorary Research Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia.

From the Publisher