Our latest “Document of the Week” was chosen by our Marketing and Editorial Assistant, Laura Wales. It is Agatha Christie’s first published short story, “The Affair at the Victory Ball”, which appeared in The Sketch on 7 March 1923.
Agatha Christie grew up reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories with her sister, Madge, who as a child challenged her to write her own detective story. It wasn’t until Agatha began working as a nurse at the Red Cross Hospital in Torquay during the First World War, that she began piecing together her first plot. She took inspiration from a stint working in the dispensary: “Since I was surrounded by poison, perhaps it was natural that death by poisoning should be the method I selected”.
With the storyline drafted, all she was missing was a detective. In August 1914, a group of Belgian refugees passed through Torquay. She thought, “Why not make my detective a Belgian? There were all types of refugees. How about a refugee police officer?” She decided that he would be a tidy little man, the opposite of his creator.
Despite six initial rejections, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in 1920, introducing the now renowned detective, Hercule Poirot.
Drawn to the character of Poirot, Bruce Ingram, then editor of The Sketch, commissioned Christie to write twelve short stories about the character for the periodical. “The Affair at the Victory Ball” was the first in the series, significant for its construction of psychological mystery.
Stories by several successful authors, such as Conan Doyle and P. G. Wodehouse, had first appeared in serialised form. By featuring in The Sketch, Christie’s work became part of this literary tradition, establishing her as a contemporary of other popular writers.
Where to find this document
This document is from our collection, The Sketch, 1893–1958. Replete with photographs and illustrations, and featuring contributions on fashion, literature, and gossip, The Sketch was a periodical that provided extensive coverage of aristocratic and celebrity culture for nearly seven decades. This collection contains almost 170,000 images from approximately 3,500 issues of The Sketch, published between January 1893 and December 1958. Visit the collection page to learn more.