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 child, Agatha, was born. Christie described her childhood as "very happy". She was surrounded by a series of strong and independent women from an early age. Her time was spent alternating between her home in Devon, her step-grandmother and aunt's house in Ealing, West London, and parts of Southern Europe, where her family would holiday during the winter. Agatha was raised in a household with various esoteric beliefs and, like her siblings, believed that her mother Clara was a psychic with the ability of second sight. Agatha's sister Margaret had been sent to Roedean in Sussex for her education, but