CHRISTIE, Agatha

• The Mysterious Affair at Styles, first UK edition; published by John Lane, The Bodley Head in 1921.

Description

• The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Christie’s debut novel and introduces her most enduring characters, Hercule Poirot, Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp. Written in 1916 on a dare from her sister, the story uses precise chemical and pharmaceutical knowledge Christie had acquired during her wartime service as a dispensary nurse in Torquay. The novel began her immense literary corpus and it was one of the most significant milestones in crime fiction history.

• The Mysterious Affair at Styles was initially serialised in The Weekly Times in 1920, with the true first edition published in New York by John Lane in October 1920. This first UK edition followed in January 1921, using American sheets.

• Octavo. First edition, first impression. Publisher’s original brown cloth. Near fine with only slight foxing to the block edges. Hinges intact with minor fraying to the front end paper near the inner joint. No inscriptions and clean throughout. A well-preserved copy of an exceptionally scarce twentieth-century work, rarely found in the original cloth without significant restoration.