Mary Fortune - it almost sounds like a made up name. However, although Mary did use numerous pseudonyms, this wasn’t one of them. Mary Fortune saw the Irish Potato Famine, the construction of Canada’s railways, the violence and despair of the Australian goldfields and rise rise and fall of Marvellous Melbourne - at the time one of the richest cities in the world. She established a name for herself as a top journalist and writer of crime fiction, and forged a career most women were locked out of. But she also had personal demons - struggles with alcohol, poverty and a criminal son. Her life - its disappointments and its opportunities - in many ways mirrors the colonial society in which she lived.

Sources/Further Reading:

Brown, Megan and Sussex, Lucy: Outrageous Fortunes - The Adventures of Mary Fortune, Crime-Writer, and Her Criminal Son George

Melbourne Museum: Marvellous Melbourne https://museumsvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/resources/marvellous-melbourne/

Sussex, Lucy: Mary Fortune https://victorianfictionresearchguides.org/mary-fortune/

National Museum Australia: Defining Moments - Federation https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/federation

Michel, Alice: Hidden Fortunes of Colonial Australian Popular Fiction: Women in Mary Fortune’s “Dora Carleton”

https://moujique.savana-hosting.cz/easa_wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/02-Alice-Michel-Hidden-Fortunes-of-Colonial-Australian-Fiction_PAGC.pdf

Michel, Alice: Unconventional Memoirs: Mary Fortune’s Account of Life on the Diggings

https://journals.openedition.org/ces/4138

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