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 the house; the English were of all kinds". Christie published relatively few non-fiction works: Often referred to as the "Queen of Crime" or "Queen of Mystery", Agatha Christie is the world's best-selling mystery writer and is considered a master of suspense, plotting, and characterisation. Some critics, however, have regarded Christie's plotting as superior to her skill with other literary elements. Novelist Raymond Chandler criticised her in his essay "The Simple Art of Murder", and American literary critic Edmund Wilson was dismissive of Christie and the detective fiction genre generally in his "New Yorker" essay, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?"