20. Christie, Agatha. Typed letter signed (“Agatha Christie”), 3 pages (5.5 x 7 in.; 140 x 178 mm.), on two conjoined leaves, front and back on second leaf, Winterbrook House, Wallingford, Berks., England, 19 February 1966, written to Miss Evelyn B. Byrne, The Bronx, New York. With original envelope. Fine condition. 

Christie writes in part:
I would say that I much enjoyed the historical novels of Stanley Wayman – “Under the Red Robe”, “The Abbess of Veaye”, “The Castle Inn” (this I read again with much pleasure only a year ago), etc. All the Sherlock Holmes stories were enthusiasms of mine. Maurice Hewletts’ “The Forest Lovers”. Practically all of Dickens, though I did skip some of the more sentimental bits, but much relished Mrs. Nickleby, for example, especially the mad old gentleman who was courting her by throwing vegetable marrows over his garden wall! Charlotte M. Young’s “Unknown to History” was very good. Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” I found wildly exciting. The early Hugh Walpole were his best – I enjoyed “Mr. Perrin and Mr. Trail” and “Prelude to Adventure” attracted me, when I was rather elder, by their intense originality. P.G. Wodehouse I enjoyed enormously…I had a brief passion for Maeterlink’s
“Bluebird”. Nobody forced me on to Shakespeare, which I consider very lucky, as I was able to approach him from seeing him first on a stage! This is the way that I think all teenagers should meet Shakespeare first, since that is the purpose for which they were meant…The short stories of H.G. Wells also made a great impression on me, especially “The Crystal Egg” and the “Country of the Blind”…Sincerely yours, Agatha Christie


From 1966 to 1970, Evelyn Byrne ran a program at New York City's Elizabeth Barrett Browning Junior High School where she asked major literary and artistic figures of the time to write back with their recollections of what books inspired them while they were teenagers. An assortment of their responses were published in the book
Attacks of Taste, printed in 1971 by Gotham Book Mart. 
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by Profiles in History
June 11, 2015 11:00 AM PDT
26662 Agoura Rd
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