Literary References

It is well known that Agatha Christie was an avid reader since her childhood. Her mother Clara did not approve of children reading before the age of eight, but that didn't prevent young Agatha Miller to read. Much of what she enjoyed reading in her youth and through her adult life can be seen through her detective fiction, believe it or not. She'd quote a piece of poetry here, include a reference to Shakespeare there, add a connection to another book through a title, or simply base a plot on a simply nursery rhyme.

Detective Fiction in Her Works

Literature was so important for Agatha, that she made it important for her detective, Hercule Poirot. In the Poirot novel The Clocks, even Poirot discusses writers of the detective genre, and has enjoyed some detective novels over others. Here, in this novel, Agatha makes a reference to a variety of detective novels. She mentions the works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Gaston Le Roux, Maurice LeBlanc, Anna Katharine Green, and even Ariadne Oliver (Agatha's fictional detective writer character!).

Agatha connects with famous detectives of her time when she wrote the short stories that became Partners in Crime, which feature Agatha's sleuth couple Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. This collection was so unique, because she had Tommy and Tuppence imitate detectives from fiction--imitating their personalities, phrases, and manner of solving crime. A few of these fictional sleuths have now disappeared from the modern reader's interest (as Christie put it, "[other writers] have more or less perished in oblivion."). The detectives featured in Partners in Crime were from the stories by G. K. Chesterton, Freeman Wills Crofts, Anthony Berkeley, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and even Agatha Christie!

Tommy and Tuppence channel Hercule Poirot in the final short story. It was never exactly stated that Poirot and his assistant Hastings were fictional characters; however, we are to believe that for the Beresfords, these were simply fictional characters, since all the other detectives they were imitating were. That would be an interesting point of discussion among fans of Christie. Would the Beresfords, then, be in the "real" world, while Poirot still resides in fiction? For Poirot, he was in the "real" world, whereas Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character! For more on this confusion, and a possible theory that sorts this "real" vs. "fictional" world dilemma, click here for "Proof of Same Universe Theory" under the featured article "Fictional World of Agatha".

Agatha Christie puts in another reference to herself besides the collection Partners in Crime; however, this time she actually includes her name! In her 1942 Miss Marple novel The Body in the Library, the grandson of a major character in the book tells the police that he's a fan of detective stories, and that he has autographs from "Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie." So, to complicate matters, Agatha Christie is even in Marple's fictional world, but also happens to be its creator!

Other Literary References in Her Works

Now, without further ado, here is a list (not meant to be complete) of Agatha Christie's works that contain literary references found therein: (* denotes 2014 novel written by Sophie Hannah)

Shakespeare
  • Murder on the Orient Express (As You Like It)
  • Hercule Poirot's Christmas (Macbeth)
  • Sad Cypress (Twelfth Night)
  • Absent in the Spring ("Sonnet 98")
  • Sparkling Cyanide (Hamlet)
  • Taken at the Flood (Julius Caesar)
  • They Came to Baghdad (Hamlet)
  • Destination Unknown (Twelfth Night)
  • The Pale Horse (Macbeth)
  • A Caribbean Mystery (Hamlet)
  • A Caribbean Mystery (Macbeth)
  • Third Girl (Hamlet)
  • Endless Night (Othello)
  • By The Pricking of My Thumbs (Macbeth)
  • Hallowe'en Party (Hamlet)
  • Nemesis (Macbeth)
  • Curtain (Romeo and Juliet)
  • Curtain (Othello)
  • The Monogram Murders ("Sonnet 70") *
  • The Monogram Murders (The Tempest) *
Nursery Rhymes
  • "Sing A Song of Sixpence" ("Sing a Song of Sixpence")
  • "How Does Your Garden Grow?" ("Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary")
  • "Three Blind Mice" ("Three Blind Mice")
  • "The Market Basing Mystery" ("The rabbit has a charming face...", anonymous poetry of little value)
  • "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" ("Sing a Song of Sixpence")
  • And Then There Were None (old English rhyme, originally "Ten Little Niggers")
  • One, Two, Buckle My Shoe ("One, Two, Buckle My Shoe")
  • N or M? ("Goosey Goosey Gander")
  • N or M? ("Little Jack Horner")
  • Five Little Pigs ("This Little Piggy")
  • Taken at the Flood ("Little Boy Blue")
  • Crooked House ("There Was a Crooked Man")
  • They Came to Baghdad ("How Many Miles to Babylon?")
  • A Pocket Full of Rye ("Sing a Song of Sixpence")
  • Hickory Dickory Dock ("Hickory Dickory Dock")
  • The Clocks ("Mrs. Bond")
  • Third Girl ("Rub-a-dub-dub")
  • Third Girl ("Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man")
  • Hallowe'en Party ("Ding Dong Dell")
  • Fiddlers Three--play ("Old King Cole")
Poetry
  • "The Gate of Baghdad" (poem "Gates of Damascus" by James Elroy Flecker)
  • Three Act Tragedy (poem "Idylls of the King" by Lord Alfred Tennyson)
  • Hercule Poirot's Christmas (poem "Retribution" by Friedrich Von Logau)
  • Murder is Easy (poem "The Winners" by Rudyard Kipling)
  • Murder is Easy (poem/quatrain "I do not love thee, Doctor Fell..." by Tom Brown)
  • Murder is Easy (poem "To a Fat Lady Seen From the Train" by Frances Cornford)
  • Sad Cypress (poem "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" by William Wordsworth)
  • The Moving Finger (poems or quatrains collected called "The Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam)
  • The Hollow (poem "Maud" by Lord Alfred Tennyson)
  • Taken at the Flood (poem "Enoch Arden" by Lord Alfred Tennyson)
  • The Rose and the Yew Tree (poem "Little Gidding" by T. S. Eliot)
  • They Came to Baghdad (epic poem "Paradise Lost" by John Milton)
  • Mrs. McGinty's Dead (poem "Evelyn Hope" by Robert Browning)
  • Mrs. McGinty's Dead (poem "The Patriot: An Old Story" by Robert Browning)
  • Mrs. McGinty's Dead (poem "The Last Tournament" by Lord Alfred Tennyson)
  • Hickory Dickory Dock (epic poem "Paradise Lost" by John Milton)
  • Dead Man's Folly (epic poem "The Faerie Queene" by Edmund Spenser)
  • Ordeal by Innocence (poem "Sailing beyond Seas" by Jean Ingelow)
  • The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (poem "The Lady of Shalott" by Lord Alfred Tennyson)
  • Endless Night (poem "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake)
  • Endless Night (poem "The Fly" by William Blake)
  • Endless Night (poem "Requiem" by Robert Louis Stevenson)
  • Nemesis (poem "Little Gidding" by T. S. Eliot)
  • Postern of Fate (poem "Gates of Damascus" by James Elroy Flecker)
  • Curtain (poem "Maud" by Lord Alfred Tennyson)
Mythology
  • The Hollow (Norse)
  • The Labors of Hercules (Greek)
  • A Caribbean Mystery (Greek)
  • Third Girl (Greek)
  • Hallowe'en Party (Greek)
  • Nemesis (Greek)
Other References
  • Murder in Mesopotamia (The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens)
  • They Came to Baghdad (A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)
  • Appointment with Death (Bible, from Ecclesiastes 4:1-3)
  • Appointment with Death (Bible, from Matthew 4:9)
  • Hickory Dickory Dock (quote by Naomi Royde-Smith)
  • Dead Man's Folly (Bible, from Matthew 6:28)
  • "In a Glass Darkly" (Bible, from 1 Corinthians 13:12)
  • The Pale Horse (Bible, from Revelation 6:8)
  • Nemesis (Bible, from Amos 5:24)
  • Mrs. McGinty's Dead (children's game, same name)
  • Sleeping Murder (play The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster)
  • They Came to Baghdad (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)
  • Come, Tell Me How You Live (title originated from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)
  • "The Dream" (Napoleon's Book of Fate and Oraculum by anonymous author)
  • The Clocks (proverbial rhyme quoted by Benjamin Franklin)
  • The Clocks (King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard)
  • The Clocks (Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll)
  • The Clocks (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle)
  • The Clocks (The Adventures of Arsene Lupin by Maurice Leblanc)
  • The Clocks (The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Le Roux)
  • Dead Man's Folly (David Copperfield by Charles Dickens)
  • Dead Man's Folly (The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens)
  • Dead Man's Folly (quote of Oliver Cromwell, "keep your powder dry")
  • Passenger to Frankfurt (quote by Jan Smuts)
  • Passenger to Frankfurt (The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope)
  • Nemesis (poem quoted from The Green Carnation by Robert Smythe Hichens)