NEW YORK ANTIQUARIAN BOOK FAIR 2026
7. CHRISTIE, Agatha THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES Bodley Head, 1921 [46054] First edition. Original brown cloth with black titles and Art Deco design. Top edge stained blue. A fine copy with beauti - fully clean cloth and distinct lettering and design. There are a couple of small production blemishes to the rear cover and the slightest fraying to part of the rear joint, but beyond that looks barely handled. Internal- ly, notably fresh and clean and most unusually free from fox- ing. An exceptional copy. $35,000 The author’s first novel, which sees the first appearance of M. Hercule Poirot. Due to the wartime restric- 8. CHRISTIE, Agatha SAD CY- PRESS Collins Crime Club, 1940 [46737] First edition. Orange cloth let- tered in black in pictorial dust- wrapper. A fine copy, with slight offsetting from the jacket in a fine dustwrapper, which just shows trivial rubs to a cou- ple of corners but is exceptional- ly bright and crisp. $13,000 An Hercule Poirot novel.
INSCRIBED TO HER HUSBAND 9. CHRISTIE, Agatha FIVE LITTLE PIGS Collins Crime Club, 1942 [46741] First edition. Orange cloth lettered in black. Author’s presenta- tion copy, inscribed on publication, on the front endpaper to Christie’s husband, Max Mallowan, “Max from Agatha / Jan 1943” with a small later gift sticker, inscribed by Christie to her housekeeper, Phyllis Rice, “Mrs Rice [From] Agatha Mallowan” A very good copy, the spine a little faded and a patch of fading to the upper cover where Christie had stuck the gift label to Mrs Rice. $13,000 An exceptional association copy, inscribed by Christie to unquestionably the most important man in her life. Christie met Max Mallowan in 1929 through their mutual friends, Leonard and Katherine Woolley, at a dig in Ur. Following a whirlwind romance, and despite the difference in age (Christie was 40, Mallowan 26) they were married in 1930. Throughout the thirties, every autumn and spring Christie would accompany Mal- lowan to the middle east on archaeological expeditions. Christie served as the official photographer, developing prints herself in makeshift dark - rooms. She also discovered she had a gift for restoring pottery, piecing together fragments thousands of years old with infinite In between help - ing her husband she wrote some of her best known novels on these ex- peditions. During the War Mallowan worked with this friend Stephen Glanville (and dedicatee of Five Little Pigs) at the Air Ministry. After the War Mal- lowan remained in archaeology as an academic and he and Christie split their time between Greenway in Devon (purchased in 1938) and Winter- brook House (purchased in 1934) in Wallingford. In her autobiography, Christie described their marriage as “like parallel railway tracks—each needing the other near, never converging.”, whist Mallowan in his mem- oirs wrote, “Few men know what it is to live in harmony beside an imag- inative, creative mind which inspires life with zest.”
tions this book was made from poor quality stock which browns very easily. The boards are also very fragile with the majority of copies sur- viving only in a disbound or heavily repaired state. Copies as well pre- served as this one are very rarely encountered.
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