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

by Lucy Sussex, Megan Brown

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography

336 pages, Paperback

Published February 11, 2025

About the 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.

Reviews

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Mary Fortune' is a wonderful name for a writer, even though she always wrote under many other pseudonyms, especially Waif Wanderer and W.W. Although many in literary bohemia knew her real name, it was not widely broadcast. Between 1855 and 1920 she wrote articles, serialized novels, poetry and short stories in various local periodicals, particularly the long-running and popular Australian Journal. From 1868 she contributed a column called 'The Detective's Album', featuring a male detective Mark Sinclair, under the initials W.W. This eventually amounted to over 500 narratives and formed the basis of her book The Detective's Album, published in 1871 and the first book of crime short stories published in Australia, and the first detective collection by a woman in the world. In her Ladies Page columns, writing variously as Mignon, Nemia, Nessuno and Sylphid, she was both journalist and flâneur (flâneuse) walking the streets and observing - an unusual thing for a woman- and she wrote lively descriptions of Melbourne life, similar to those being penned by Marcus Clarke at the same time, but from a woman's perspective. She wrote a fictionalized memoir in the 1880s, Twenty Six Years Ago but there is little other personal correspondence. When you read her lively, whip-smart writing you find yourself wondering why you haven't heard of her before.

One of the most fascinating aspects of this biography, and one which the authors bring out really well, is the paradox that Mary Fortune built her literary reputation (albeit under a nom-de-plume) on criminal activity through her 'Detective's Album' columns, while her only son was completely enmeshed in the criminal system as perpetrator and prisoner. George Fortune's life, from the age of fourteen was a series of arrests and imprisonments, starting with his arrest for stealing a hat in July 1871. From here he was committed to industrial schools, farm placements, youth imprisonment at Pentridge and eventually long stints in jail in both Victoria and Tasmania. There was no glamour in his criminal history of crime and recidivism.

Mary Fortune's good fortune was to have two biographers in Lucy Sussex and Megan Brown who have worked hard over so long to bring her name, and her full-rounded life story before 21st century readers. Their biography is deeply researched, readable and imbued with admiration and sympathy for a trail-blazing woman writer, whose writing is still brisk and lively today.

For my complete review, please visit:
https://residentjudge.com/2025/02/12/...

[B.P. Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historical non-fiction narratives like this one are pure ‘cold case’ storytelling. In this instance, two historians independently stumbled on a rare beast in Australian colonial history – a woman writer of bloody fiction from the wild frontiers. Mary Fortune, an Irishwoman who had found her way across the world via Canada to Australia, was an independent woman making her way in a harsh and unforgiving world by writing.
Writing in any era is precarious work, but here was a woman, living on the margins in a colonial and deeply patriarchal society, writing anonymously or under pseudonyms as a man, making just enough to keep herself and her young son alive.
Writing melodramatic works of early detective fiction, before such things were widely popular, was interesting, and intriguing in itself. But as Brown and Sussex joined forces and dug deeper, they found Mary Fortune’s life was little short of extraordinary. Her courage and resilience – despite the twin tragedies of her alcoholism and her son, George’s extensive and spectacular criminal career – were nothing short of gritty urban drama. Desperate mother and son parted ways as he came of age and spent increasing stints in jail, but remained powerfully united as her alcoholism and struggle for recognition kept her plumbing the depths of her, and his, life story. But while, as Brown and Sussex found, women writers weren’t rare at all, none balanced on such a razor’s edge of risk, reward, failure and disaster as Mary Fortune.

[Giovanna Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kudos to the writers for the extensive research. Finding historical needles in haystacks of early Melbourne. Trying to find anything in writing about women is hard, and the authors have done a great job.
It was interesting to read about the life of early Melbournians. Yikes was it TOUGH! Kids expected to fend for themselves from 12 or 13. Ha. Can you imagine today?
For me the first few chapters were tough - the structure going in and out of Fortune's life and her memoir or stories made my head spin. Once it settled into the story it got better.
They manage to reconstruct her life, with gaps and suppositions. A very thorough work about a woman who had an amazing output (writing) considering her circumstances and how men riffed off her stories. I also didn't realise that Fergus Hume's novel Mystery of the Hansom Cab was self published. Fortune didn't have the means to do this herself. Would have been interesting if she'd had a literary 'champion' who assisted her, edited etc. What she could have done.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

1800's Mary Fortune was one of our earliest crime writers but was almost lost from history, partly because she wrote under so many psuedonyms, but mostly simply because she was a woman. And my what a bold woman she was!

The stories that Lucy Sussex and Megan Brown share about the endless rabbit holes of uncovering yet more of her writings and history are wild. 

I also loved the excerpts of Mary Fortune's writings and am now eagerly tracking down her short stories in "Nothing but murders and bloodshed and hanging".

I would especially recommend this book of you are interested in 1800's Victoria, as Mary Fortune spent much of her life living in (and writing about) the seedier side of Goldfields and Melbourne... and she didn't hold back! 

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very scholarly, extremely well-researched biography of Mary Fortune, Australia’s first crime writer.

[Alexandra Daw · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most engaging and insightful as well as informative read for bibliophiles, lovers of crime fiction, women’s fiction, Australian literary history and last but not least, family history.