Agatha Christie & Australia in the 1920s.
Updated: 29 minutes ago
Agatha Christie’s works have been widely published in Australian newspapers and magazines over the last hundred years. This article focuses on the newspaper and magazine appearances of her stories that occurred after she visited Australia in 1922. During the 1920s publications printing her works stretched across Australia, including papers in Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth.
Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, became available to readers in Australia in April 1921, followed by The Secret Adversary in 1922.
However, the amount of her books sold in Australia during the 1920s would unquestionably have been very small given Australia's population was eight times smaller than Britain and most of the books sold in that decade appear to have been export copies from Britain.
Agatha Visits Australia.
Agatha Christie visited Australia as part of the entourage promoting the British Empire Exhibition that would be held in London. Her husband, Archie, was the financial advisor on the trip which travelled the world, with stops including South Africa and Hawaii.
She arrived in Australia in early May and departed at the end of June 1922. This appears to have gained her much more press coverage as an individual than her books had done to date.
During her trip, she wrote several letters to her mother confirming she really enjoyed her time in Australia.
I rode part of the way on the engine! It was lovely all through the bush, very dense undergrowth, and the great tall tree trunks. The engine flung out showers of sparks, but a kindly stoker was on duty to extinguish me if I was smouldering in more than two places at once! (May 20, 1922)
Breakfast at 7.45 and a start for Yanga Station. We saw four kangaroos, an ‘old man’ red kangaroo, and three small blue fliers. Also, later two meditative emus... There is a magnificent lake there, covered with black swans and wild game and birds of all kinds. (May 27, 1922)
There is also a wonderful photograph of Agatha relaxing in a deck chair in Australia - an image that was used for the branding of the 2025 International Agatha Christie Festival.
However, it was her disappearance in December 1926 that garnered the largest media attention in Australia to-date. This led to an increase in demand for her works. Prior to 1927 there had only been one magazine short story and one newspaper short story written by her published in any Australian publications. The volume of her works published in these media formats increased significantly from 1927 onwards.
While this article covers only Australian periodicals in the 1920s, it is worth noting that her second novel, The Secret Adversary, was serialised in The Auckland Star (New Zealand) at the end of 1923 though not in Australia.
1920s Magazine Appearances.
The first known appearance of any Agatha Christie story in Australia was an unusual one. The Wife of the Kenite appeared in The Home: An Australian Quarterly in September 1922 several months after her visit. This is the first global appearance of this story which remained uncollected in any anthology or Agatha Christie omnibus until 2018. This is also the only Australian magazine to publish any work by Christie in the 1920s.
The Home was published by Art in Australia, based in Sydney, NSW. To learn more, go to this link which provides a standalone in-depth look about this appearance.
1920s Newspaper Appearances.
During the 1920s five Agatha Christie short stories and one full length novel were published in Australian newspapers. During this period, Australian newspapers often reprinted or syndicated material from overseas magazines and newspapers. When this occurred the relevant source was usually credited.
1926 September 11: The Lonely God, The Observer, Adelaide.
Credit provided to The Royal magazine. This short story first appeared in the July 1926 issue of The Royal (a Pearson’s publication, England) and was originally illustrated. Appearing in Australia two months later, this version had no illustration. After this appearance in Australia, it did not appear in print again until it’s inclusion in While the Light Lasts & Other Stories (HarperCollins, 1997, UK). It is worth noting that The Observer was part of The Register newspaper group.
1927 April 9: The Edge, The Observer, Adelaide. No illustration.
Credit provided to Pearson’s magazine. This short story first appeared in Pearson’s (UK) in February 1927. After this appearance in Australia, it did not appear in print again until it’s inclusion in While the Light Lasts & Other Stories (HarperCollins, 1997, UK).
1927 June 4 – July 15: The Mystery at Styles, The Sun News-Pictorial, Melbourne. Each instalment was illustrated, though some images were reused. Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, had been serialised in 1920 and 1921 in Britain also under this abridged title. After the British serialisation, the next appearance in a newspaper was just a few weeks prior to this Australian version, when it appeared in the US, also under the title The Mystery at Styles. Below are six of the Australian illustrations, including the first instalment's which solely had portraits of Mary Cavendish and Hastings.
This was the only Christie novel or story to be published in Melbourne in the 1920s and the only Australian appearance of her first novel outside of the book edition. The newspaper was owned by The Herald & Weekly Times, Ltd. (Melbourne).
1928 March 24: Ingots of Gold, The Saturday Journal, Adelaide. Unillustrated.
Credit provided to The Royal magazine (UK). This short story first appeared in The Royal in February 1928. This Miss Marple story was collected in The Thirteen Problems (Collins, 1932). The Saturday Journal was owned by Adelaide's News Ltd.
1928 March 31: Ingots of Gold, The Observer, Adelaide. Unillustrated.
Credit provided to The Royal (UK). This short was published just a week after it’s cross-town rival published the same story. In 1928, The Saturday Journal was part of News Ltd while The Observer was part of The Register group. Despite the different ownership, the formating of the article was identical implying the layout was shared. This was the fourth, and final, newspaper serialisation in Adelaide in the 1920s.
1929 May 12: A Fruitful Sunday, Sunday News, Sydney. This illustrated short was part of their ‘Famous Author Series’ and was noted as ‘Special to the Sunday News’.
This newspaper was the Sunday edition of Sydney’s Evening News. These papers were owned by S. Bennett Ltd. Further disclosure stated that stories in this series were distributed across Australia and New Zealand by Australian United Press. This was the second global appearance of this story as it had only appeared once before which was in the UK’s Daily Mail (August 11, 1928).
1929 July 3 - 5: Wasps’ Nest, Evening News, Sydney. Serialised across three instalments and with the tag line Introducing Mrs. Christie’s famous detective “Poirot”. No illustrations.
This short story was not collected in a book until 1961 in the US (Double Sin and Other Stories) and 1974 in the UK (Poirot’s Early Cases). Together with A Fruitful Sunday, these were the only two Christies published in Sydney newspapers in the 1920s.
1929 December 22: A Fruitful Sunday, The Sunday Times, Perth. Unillustrated.
Uniquely both this and the earlier appearance were both in Sunday papers, clearly playing off the story’s title. The paper was independently owned by James Macallum Smith. This was the only Christie story published in a newspaper throughout the 1920s in Western Australia.
Summary.
With only about 5 million Australians in the 1920s, Christie's appearances in the press across Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth demonstrated considerable geographic reach for a relatively new author. When one also considers that most of the newspapers that published her were unrelated, this breadth of publication was clearly not due to in-house syndication but likely was more influenced by the marketing of an independent distributer such as Austalia's United Press - though this is dependent on further research.
For fans, Australia's Trove is free online research portal, operated by the National Library of Australia in collaboration with Australian libraries and other cultural institutions. Its newspaper collection is especially valuable as it contains digitised historical Australian newspapers and supports searching by keyword, newspaper title, date and location. For collectors, it is exceptionally difficult to find extant newspapers from this period to collect. The Home does appear for sale occasionally and given it contains the first appearance of a Christie story combined with the magazine's scarcity expect to pay up to $500 AUS should a copy surface.
Thanks!
I want to thank a friend of the website in Australia for assisting with this article. Her tireless effort in tracking down many Australian publications, all of which will be discussed throughout future articles, is most appreciated.
Closing Comments.
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The excerpts from her letters to her mother are wonderful.