Cover of Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

A Very Elusive Woman

First published 2022

About the book

“Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was.”

Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was “just” an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn’t? Her life is fascinating for its mysteries and its passions and, as Lucy Worsley says, “She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern.” She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness.

Read the full description

So why—despite all the evidence to the contrary—did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?

She was born in 1890 into a world that had its own rules about what women could and couldn’t do. Lucy Worsley’s biography is not just of a massively, internationally successful writer. It’s also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman.

With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley’s biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realize what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was—truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.

Readers on Hardcover call it inspiring, emotional and informative.

About the author

Lucy Worsley, born 1973, United Kingdom.

Subjects

Catalogue record

Author
Worsley, Lucy, 1973–
Statement
Agatha Christie : A Very Elusive Woman / Lucy Worsley.

Book facts

Pages
498
ISBN
978-1-5293-0388-9
4 more ISBNs
  • 978-1-63936-253-0
  • 978-1-63936-573-9
  • 978-1-63936-252-3
  • 978-1-5293-0387-2
Records
Open Library

Catalogue data checked 3 October 2026