The Queen of Crime Fiction's First Published Work Has Been Discovered. It Waited 120 Years for Premiere

The poem "Steam Versus Electricity" is the first published work by novelist Agatha Christie, the Times reported. The previously unknown poem appeared in a London newspaper in 1905. The author, the future queen of crime fiction, was 15 years old at the time.

The discovery of the six-stanza poem was made by Christie enthusiasts: literary scholar James Bernthal-Hooker and his husband, Alan, who were searching through online press archives, a British newspaper reported on Sunday. They said Christie's early poetry , which drew on Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, two of her favorite writers, demonstrated talent, although "her forte was definitely prose."

The author herself mentioned the creation of the poem in her autobiography, published posthumously in 1977. However, it turned out that the information included there had been misleading those searching for the work for years.

In her memoirs, Christie incorrectly stated the year she wrote the poem "Steam Versus Electricity" and confused the electric train accident with the tram accident that inspired the poem. These misdirections meant that, despite the detective skills of her admirers, the poem remained largely unknown for 120 years.

At the time of writing the poem, the teenage Christie was living in Ealing, west London, with her relative, Margaret Miller. The young poet submitted her poem to two newspapers—the Middlesex County Times and the Ealing and Hanwell Post— where it was published on July 8, 1905. Beneath the poem is the signature AMC Miller, which stands for Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller, Christie's maiden name.

Her first novel, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," featuring the famous detective Hercule Poirot , was published in 1920. Christie wrote a total of 66 crime novels, as well as short story collections and plays. She also published two volumes of poetry: "The Road of Dreams" in 1925 and "Poems" in 1973.

From London Marta Zabłocka