India, Jan. 24 -- * Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in scenic Torquay, Devon, on what is called the English Riviera, on September 15, 1890. She was the youngest of the three children of Frederick Miller and Clarissa Boehmer, a wealthy upper-middle-class couple. The baby Agatha was baptised at the local All Saints Church, which her family helped build. The marble font used at the baptism, and the Miller family pew, still stand.

* She learned to read at age four, and devoured the works of Louisa May Alcott, Edith Nesbit and Lewis Carroll, among others. She had an early love of dogs too. Her first dog was a Yorkshire Terrier puppy she received as a fifth birthday present.

* Her first published work was a poem about the trams newly int...