Outrageous Fortunes: The Adventures of Mary Fortune, Crime-writer, and Her Criminal Son George

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Lucy Sussex Megan Brown

Outrageous Fortunes

The Adventures of Mary Fortune, Crime-writer, and Her Criminal Son George

Lucy Sussex, Megan Brown

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English

LA TROBE UNIVERSITY PRESS
11 February 2025

Biography: literary; Australasian & Pacific history; Biography - Australian

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The gripping story of Australia's first female crime writer and her career-criminal son

When Mary Fortune arrived in Melbourne with her infant son in 1855, she was determined to reinvent herself. The Victorian goldfields were just the place.

After a time selling sly grog and a bigamous marriage to a policeman, Mary became a pioneering journalist and author. The Detective's Album was the first book of detective stories to be published in Australia and the first by a woman to be published anywhere in the world. Her work appeared in magazines and newspapers for over forty years - but none of her readers knew who she was. She wrote using pseudonyms, often adopting the voice of a male narrator to write about 'unladylike' subjects.

When Mary died in 1911, her identity was nearly lost. In Outrageous Fortunes, Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex retrieve Fortune's astonishing career and discover an equally absorbing story in her illegitimate son, George. While Mary was writing crime, George was committing it, with convictions for theft and bank robbery. In their intertwined stories, crime fiction meets true crime, and Melbourne's literary bohemia consorts with the criminal underworld.

'Mary Fortune's bold fictions electrified colonial Australia. But her own story, pieced together by two tenacious literary detectives, was best of all.' -Gideon Haigh

'A fine introduction to the author and her work.' -Garry Disher

'Outrageous Fortunes is a delight- beautifully written and carefully researched, it is an engrossing, illuminating and ultimately deeply moving portrait of an extraordinary woman and her ne'er-do-well son. The pioneering crime writer Mary Helena Fortune finally receives the biography she deserves, and no mystery reader should be without it.' -John Connolly

By: Lucy Sussex, Megan Brown
Imprint: LA TROBE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 233mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 470g
ISBN: 9781760645052
ISBN 10: 1760645052
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 11 February 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Megan Brown (Author) Megan Brown completed her PhD at the University of Wollongong, examining the work of Mary Fortune. She has contributed chapters to The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature and The Unsocial Sociability of Women's Life Writing. Her forthcoming book is Outrageous Fortunes. Lucy Sussex (Author) Lucy Sussex's books include Blockbuster! Fergus Hume and The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, which won the 2015 Victorian Community History Award, Women Writers and Detectives in the Nineteenth Century and Saltwater in the Ink- Voices from the Australian Seas. She has a PhD from the University of Wales and is an honorary fellow at La Trobe University. Her forthcoming book is Outrageous Fortunes.