Miss Marple
fictional character appearing in Agatha Christie's crime novels
Jane Marple, better known as Miss Marple, is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Miss Marple lives in the fictional English village of St Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Often characterised as an elderly spinster, she is one of Christie's best-known characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927, "The Tuesday Night Club", which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930 and her last appearance was in Sleeping Murder in 1976.
Origins
Marple is based on friends of Christie's step grandmother, Margaret Miller (née West). Christie attributed the inspiration for the character to multiple sources, stating that Miss Marple was "the sort of old lady who would have been rather like some of my step grandmother's Ealing cronies – old ladies whom I have met in so many villages where I have gone to stay as a girl". Christie also used material from her fictional creation, spinster Caroline Sheppard, who appeared in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. When Michael Morton adapted the novel for the stage, he replaced the character of Caroline with a young girl. This change saddened Christie and she determined to give old maids a voice; thus, Miss Marple was born.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q193531. VIAF identifies the subject as 20152329368502672984. The Library of Congress control number is no2018043971. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 1932, 1930 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “Miss Marple” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.