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It’s been 100 years since author Agatha Christie created the famous private detective Hercule Poirot and launched her career as one of the most successful authors of her time. Her detective novels and short stories have sold over four billion copies. Despite her clear success as an author, Christie often claimed herself to be the “slow one in the family,” and always found writing and spelling very difficult. Christie also was challenged with dysgraphia, and possibly even dyslexia. Her dysgraphia was so troublesome that she often couldn’t balance her own checkbook.
As a child Christie was homeschooled, and wasn’t expected to learn how to read until she was eight years old—but five-year-old Christie taught herself how to read years before it was expected of her. Christie and her mother were also avid storytellers, and Christie later wrote in her autobiography that she began her interest in becoming an author at eleven years old, when she started to put her stories to words and publish them in the local newspaper. Living with learning disabilities didn’t stop her from becoming the best-selling novelist to date, though.
Visit Agatha Christie’s biography on her website here to learn about how she became interested in writing. Alternatively, learn more about other famous authors who had learning disabilities here.