Getting There: Fifteen years of my life in columns

by Mary Fortune

Columnist Mary Fortune writes as if her hair is burning. Her thoughts pour out in delightfully syncopated sentences between frantic gulps of air. There should be an asterisk after each idea, like a breath mark in a piece of music. The result of all this ventilating is an unfiltered (even giddy) honesty about the joys and heartaches of being a modern working mother who aches with love for her two little sons and her good husband, Jim. Since starting her My 30s column in the Chattanooga Times Free Press about 10 years ago, Mary has given up life as a meagerly paid journalist for a life as a corporate communicator. As a result, her monthly columns have an authentic quality that comes shockingly close to pure truth, as if the ideas have been tumbling around in her brain until they are completely smooth and sincere.

304 pages, Paperback

Published February 20, 2012

About the author

Born Mary Helena Wilson in Belfast, Ireland, (circa 1832) the daughter of Scots-Irish Protestant parents, civil engineer George Wilson and his wife Eleanor (nee Atkinson). Mary Fortune was an Australian writer who wrote under the pseudonyms Waif Wander, W.W. and her initials, ‘M. H. F.’, in newspapers and popular magazines. She contributed work in a variety of genres: poetry; memoirs; journalism; serialized novels, ranging from tales of Australian life to the gothic historical romance ‘Clyzia the Dwarf; and, most importantly, over 500 crime stories. Her only book publication during her lifetime was The Detective’s Album by ‘W. W.’ (1871), a collection of her crime writing. It is now a rare item, with only one copy known to exist, held at the Mitchell Library. She was one of the earliest female detective writers in the world, one of the earliest women to write detective fiction, and probably the first to write from the viewpoint of the detective. There is some mystery as to the place and date of her death, but has been reported to be (circa 1911).