Mary Fortune

Bunyips, boundary riders and bush-lurkers: just some of the horrors that populate these tales of the Antipodean uncanny. The Australian weird tradition may be a short one, but it’s as varied and rich as anything you’ll find in the Old World. Many of these tales – from the likes of Marcus Clarke, Sophie Osmond, Ernest Favenc and Mary Fortune – are written by strangers in a new land. Traditional European elements of the weird tale appear in new forms or are moulded afresh to a harsh new environment – the haunted house is no longer a rambling manor, but an abandoned shanty or rundown homestead; the ancient wood, the lair of evils and creatures from folklore, becomes the oppressively hot, fly-infested bush; and the windswept moor is the empty, endless Australian outback with its blood-read sands and emaciated myall trees. The anthology also includes Aboriginal voices, providing a very different take on the landscape and its horrors.

A murderer is identified by a team of oxen. A dead man rises from his watery grave to indict his killer. A policeman on his nighttime beat is haunted by a prisoner serving a life sentence because of his testimony. A phantom hearse gliding through Melbourne's slums foretells violent death. Mary Fortune's dramatic crime stories, set in colonial-era Australia, comprise the first detective fiction series written by a woman. They also offer a vivid account of life and death in a country in rapid flux, as mass immigration following the discovery of gold in 1851 led to great riches for some, poverty and violence for others. Born in Ireland in 1832, Fortune emigrated to Australia during the gold-rush, which she observed firsthand and depicted in many of her stories. A bigamous marriage to a policeman gave her inside knowledge to write about crime, and in 40 years she produced over 500 stories, many of them serialized under the title "The Detective's Album" in the mass-circulation Australian Journal. She tackled subjects such as murder, armed robbery, bootlegging, and sexual violence with a frankness unprecedented for a woman in the 19th century. This book collects 18 of Fortune's finest stories and showcases her range as a writer--from melodrama to social realism, and Gothic horror to what we now call noir. Mary Fortune lived a precarious existence--repeatedly jailed for public drunkenness, homeless on occasion, unable to prevent her son George drifting into a life of crime. She preserved her privacy by publishing under pseudonyms, most commonly "Waif Wander" (or "W. W.")--it is a measure of her fame at the time that a racehorse and a greyhound were named after Waif Wander. But her anonymity meant that when she died in 1911, she was almost lost to literary history. Only recently has her true identity and her extraordinary life story emerged. This collection, appearing concurrently with a biography, restores her to her rightful place as a major crime writer.

Literary scholar James Doig has assembled a thrilling new collection of rare and previously uncollected horror and dark fantasy stories by Australian authors, all from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Here are-THE BLIGHTED MEADOW, by Mary FortuneTHE SILENT SEPULCHRE, by Charles JunorWHAT THE RATS BROUGHT, by Ernest FavencON THE ISLAND OF SHADOWS, by Ernest FavencTHE ODIC TOUCH, by Hume NisbetTOLD IN THE 'CORONA'S' CABIN ON THREE EVENINGS, by J. A. BarryTHE HOUSE OF ILL OMEN, by Rosa PraedA THING OF WAX, by Morley RobertsTHE PROPHETIC HORROR OF THE GREAT EXPERIMENT, by James EdmundTHE PRECIPITOUS DETAILS OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN AND THE THREE SKELETONS, by James EdmundTHE STRANGE CASE OF ALAN HERIOT, by Lionel SparrowTHE BLANKET FIEND, by Beatrice GrimshawTHE PHANTOM SHIP OF DIRK VAN TROMP, by James Francis DwyerTHE DEVIL'S BALL, by Dulcie DeamerTHE PLEDGE, by Helen SimpsonTHE WATCH, by Vernon KnowlesTHE HOUSE THAT TOOK REVENGE, by Vernon KnowlesTHE UNDYING ONE, by Roger Dard