148

Refusing to approve a biography about her: "I'm not dead yet"

Agatha Christie

Two Autograph Letters Signed, "Agatha Mallowan," to publisher Sherman Phelps Platt, Jr.,

indignantly declining to give permission to allow a stranger to write a biography about her, or sending New Year's wishes and mentioning that, after a good flight home from New York, she and her husband were "plunged into a Sea of Xmas preparations." Together 3 pages, small 8vo, personal stationery, first with integral blank, horizontal fold.

Wallingford, Oxfordshire, 9 August; [London], 19 December 1960s.

  • Notes: 9 August: "I don't much take to the idea of a Biography of me being done by Someone who is a complete stranger to me. Anyway I'm not dead yet. To consider Biography can wait until their subject has passed on! There seems a mania on the subject just now. I get a letter a week from Someone wanting to write my biography.
    "An evaluation of my work is different--that at least comes within the scope of my profession.
    "However I am sending on your letter to [her literary agent] Edmund Cork--as it is he who is in charge of all such arrangements."

    With--Two items: Christie's 1974 letter to Platt, bearing secretarial signature, requesting that he thank Edward Gorey for sending his book, The Awdrey-Gore Legacy (1972; published with a dedication page to Christie), and noting that "I think that his drawings are very ugly and I am allergic to them. Nor do I find his text particularly amusing." 1 page, 8vo, aerogramme, pale blue paper. Wallingford, 29 November 1974 * Edward Gorey.  The Awdrey-Gore Legacy. Oblong 8vo, publisher's pictorial boards; price-clipped dust jacket. New York: Beauford Books, (1987).
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April 9, 2026 12:00 PM EDT
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