Agatha Christie’s first work was found 120 years later: a poem from a children’s magazine revealed the unknown beginning of her career
28 October 2025 21:06
Agatha Christie’s first known literary work, the poemSteam versus Electricity, published 120 years ago, has been found in the UK. It was accidentally discovered by James Bernthal-Hooker, a researcher at the University of Suffolk, in old newspaper archives.
According to The Times, the poem was published on July 8, 1905, in the Ealing and Hanwell Post under the pseudonym A. M. Miller, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
The signature was presented as follows: “A young author has sent us a rhyming commentary on the breakdown of electric trains last Saturday.”
How it was found
Bernthal-Hooker and his partner Alan spent several months researching old issues of newspapers, trying to find the first attempts at writing by the future “queen of detective stories.”
They found out that Christie herself had given an incorrect age in her autobiography: she wrote that she had written the poem when she was 11, although she was 14 at the time. The search was complicated by the fact that young Agatha used different pseudonyms, and most archives were not digitized.
What the poem is about
“Steam vs. Electricity” is a playful poem about the technological transition from steam to electric trains, which at the same time mocks the fears of new technologies.
Given the style, researchers suggest that already in her teens Christie had a keen observation of irony and a sense of rhythm that later became recognizable in her prose.
What is known about Christie’s early work?
Until now, it was believed that Agatha Christie’s first publications appeared only in the 1920s, after the publication of her debut novel , A Mysterious Adventure in Styles, which first introduced Hercule Poirot.
However, the new discovery shows that the writer began publishing much earlier, and also actively sent her works to local newspapers and poetry magazines.
After the discovery of the archival poem , Christie’s heirs gave permission for its official reprint.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is one of the most famous authors in the world, her books have sold more than two billion copies and have been translated into more than 100 languages.
She also published two poetry collections, The Road of Dreams (1925) and Poems (1973), which for a long time remained in the shadow of her detective novels.
The discovery of the early poem, according to the researchers, may contribute to the revision of Christie’s biography and the recovery of other unknown texts. Archivists have already begun searching for possible manuscripts that might have remained in newspaper archives from the early twentieth century.
