Agatha Christie was working as a nurse (and later in a hospital dispensary) during World War I when she wrote her first published novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

What “work” means in this context

  • During World War I (1914–1918), Christie volunteered as a nurse in a hospital in Torquay, England.
  • She later trained and worked in the hospital dispensary (pharmacy), where she gained detailed knowledge of medicines and poisons that strongly influenced her detective fiction.

Connection to her first novel

  • She began writing The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1916, while she was still engaged in this wartime hospital work.
  • That medical setting and her dispensary experience helped shape the novel’s famous poison-murder plot and the realistic treatment of toxicology.

TL;DR:
When she wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles , Agatha Christie was working in a wartime hospital in Torquay—first as a nurse, then in the dispensary.

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