The Mysterious Affair at Styles - photo 1
The Mysterious Affair at Styles - photo 2

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Lot 18
28.09.2023 13:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 5 670
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1016454
Lot 18 | The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Estimate value
£ 2 500 – 4 000
The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Agatha Christie

Agatha CHRISTIE (1890-1976). The Mysterious Affair at Styles. A detective story. London: John Lane, the Bodley Head, 1921.



The first appearance of the famous detective Hercule Poirot: rare first UK edition of the author’s first book. A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone of Detective Fiction. This edition was printed on low quality paper stock and bound in a thin cloth binding, as a result of which surviving copies are almost always found in poor condition; the present example is well above the usual condition for this book.



Christie wrote this novel during the First World War in 1916 between her husband Archie’s periods of leave from active service and her hospital work, but the manuscript was turned down by a number of publishers, including Methuen and Hodder & Stoughton. It was not until three years later in 1919, just after the birth of her daughter Rosalind, when Christie had, as she wrote much later, ‘quite given up hope of ever having a book published’ that ‘the letter from the Bodley Head, asking her to visit the office and discuss The Mysterious Affair at Styles, dropped out of the sky as from nowhere […] John Lane did a clever job on Agatha, recognising both a talent and an easy touch when he saw one […] he tied her into a contract for five more books with the Bodley Head, at a royalty rate only slightly above the one being offered for Styles, which was 10 per cent on any English sale of more than 2,000 copies’ (Laura Thompson, Agatha Christie). Christie is now in the Guinness World Records as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies. Hubin, p. 80.



Octavo. Illustrations in the text (light scattered spotting, more to preliminary and final text leaves). Original tan cloth, lettered and with an ornamental design to upper cover and spine in black (lacking the dust-jacket as usual, splitting at joints as often, spine ends and extremities slightly rubbed).

Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
28.09.2023 – 28.09.2023
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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