Jules Verne in Eighty Days" (1873). Verne is generally considered a major literary author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His reputation is markedly different in Anglophone regions, where he has often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children's books, largely because of the highly abridged and altered translations in which his novels are often reprinted. Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking between Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare. He has sometimes been called the "Father of Science Fiction", a
Agatha Christie estate. Most of her books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics, and more than thirty feature films have been based on her work. Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15 September 1890 into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon. She was the youngest of three children born to Frederick Alvah Miller, an affluent American stockbroker, and his British-born wife Clara Miller née Boehmer. Agatha's mother Clara had been born in Belfast in 1854 to Captain Frederick Boehmer and his wife Mary Ann West as the couple's only daughter. Boehmer was killed