Who is Miss Marple

Jane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in twelve of Agatha Christie's crime novels. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who acts as an amateur detective, and lives in the village of St. Mary Mead. She is one of the most famous of Christie's characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first published appearance was in issue 350 of The Royal Magazine for December 1927 with the first printing of the short story "The Tuesday Night Club" which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a fu...

Dame Agatha Christie DBE (15 September 189012 January 1976), was an English crime writer of novels, short stories and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but is best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. Her works, particularly those featuring detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, have given her the title the 'Queen of Crime' and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre.

Christie has been referred to by the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling writer of books of all time and the best-selling writer of any kind, along with William Shakespeare. Only the Bible is known to have outsold her collected sales of roughly four billion copies of novels.Agatha Christie gets a clue for filmmakersEntertainment News, Michael Fleming, MediaVariety UNESCO states that she is currently the most translated individual author in the world with only the collective corporate works of Walt Disney Productions surpassing her. Christie's books have been translated into at least 56 languages.

Her stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run in the world: it opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November 1952 and as of 2009 is still running after more than 23,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's highest honour, the Grand Master Award, and in the same year, Witness for the Prosecution was given an Edgar Award by the MWA, for Best Play. Most of her books and short stories have been filmed, some many times over (Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and 4.50 From Paddington for instance), and many have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics.

In 1968, Booker Books, a subsidiary of the agri-industrial conglomerate Booker-McConnell, bought a 51 percent stake in Agatha Christie Limited, the private company that Christie had set up for tax purposes. Booker later increased its stake to 64 percent. In 1998, Booker sold its shares to Chorion, a company whose portfolio also includes the literary estates of Enid Blyton and Dennis Wheatley.Chorion

In 2004, a 5,000-word story entitled "The Incident of the Dog's Ball" was found in the attic of the author's daughter. It was published in Britain in September 2009. On November 10, 2009, Reuters announced that the story will be published by The Strand Magazine.Burton Frierson, Lost Agatha Christie story to be published, Reuters, November 10, 2009, accessed November 11, 2009.