Outrageous Fortunes: The adventures of Mary Fortune, crime-writer, and her criminal son
La Trobe University Press, $36.99 pb, 341 pp
ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.
History’s wild forces
To begin, a reviewer’s disclosure: I have known Lucy Sussex since we worked together in the mid-1990s on a research project about nineteenth-century Australian women’s writing. Lucy had already been following the various trails and clues left by crime writer Mary Fortune (1832–1911) along the winding, dimly lit corridors of pre-digital cultural history, as she reports at the end of this book: ‘In 1987 I moved from librarianship to working as a researcher for Professor Stephen Knight … I got the delightful job of largely reading old and vintage crime texts and reporting back … Stephen asked me to look into “Mrs Fortune” [and later] told me that Mary Fortune was no longer his research project, but mine. “You have that gleam in your eye!” he said.’
Continue reading for only $10 per month. Subscribe and gain full access to Australian Book Review. Already a subscriber? Sign in. If you need assistance, feel free to contact us.
Outrageous Fortunes: The adventures of Mary Fortune, crime-writer, and her criminal son
by Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex
La Trobe University Press, $36.99 pb, 341 pp
ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.