Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie also wrote as Agatha Christie Mallowan and under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Christie was born September 15,1890, in the seaside resort town of Torquay, Devon. She was educated at home by her mother until age sixteen and later studied piano and voice in Paris. Christie was an avid reader who knew by the time she was a teenager that she wanted to be a writer, but it took a dare from her sister to force Christie into writing her first novel. The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in 1920 and sold only a few thousand copies, but the novel's publication and the seventy dollars that Christie earned was enough to encourage her writing. For the next half dozen years Christie wrote steadily, turning out novels and building a readership among enthusiastic mystery buffs. But it was the publication of The Murder of Roger...