Lucy Sussex on the Australian Genesis of Crime Fiction

Event and Ticketing Details

Dates & Times

Thursday 30 July
12:45 PM - 1:30 PM

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

Get directions

Here’s a whodunnit: who wrote the biggest and fastest-selling detective novel of the 1800s, a defining work of crime fiction and Australia’s first literary blockbuster?

Before Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, there was Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. Published in Melbourne in 1886, it sold out almost instantly – and its offering of a ‘startling and realistic story of Melbourne social life’ became a runaway phenomenon at home and abroad.

Yet Hume – an aspiring playwright who wrote the novel hoping to attract the attention of theatre managers – sold the book’s copyright for a pittance, missing out on a potential fortune.

In this Midday Shot, author Lucy Sussex shares the engrossing tale of Hume and The Mystery of a Hansom Cab – equally colourful portraits of Melbourne’s blossoming cultural life in the late 1800s, as presented in her rigorously researched book Blockbuster!.