The Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie

Description

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.

Mary Anna Evans is an Assistant Professor of Professional Writing at the University of Oklahoma, USA. Her fourteen crime novels have received recognition including the Benjamin Franklin Award and three Florida Book Awards bronze medals. She holds an MFA in creative writing and is a doctoral researcher at the University of Exeter. Her work has appeared in publications including Feminist Studies, The Atlantic, The Louisville Review, and CrimeReads.
J.C. Bernthal is Visiting Lecturer at Middlesex University, UK. His publications include Queering Agatha Christie, The Ageless Agatha Christie and, with Rebecca Mills, Agatha Christie Goes to War. Bernthal founded the annual international Agatha Christie conferences in 2014 and sits on the editorial boards of Crime Fiction Studies and Clues: A Journal of Detection. Bernthal won the Popular Culture Association’s Dove Award for crime fiction scholarship in 2020.

DedicationForeword – Val McDermid
PART ONE: AGATHA CHRISTIE, THE WOMAN AND THE WRITERIntroduction, 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 NOVELSHiding 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 PlatesList of FiguresList of ContributorsAcknowledgements “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.

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