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Mary Helena Fortune (c. 1833 – 1911) was an Australian writer, under the pseudonyms "Waif Wander" and "W.W." She was one of the earliest female detective writers in the world, [1] and probably the first to write from the viewpoint of the detective.
Married to Mark Fortune and resident in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she boarded the Titanic at Southampton as a first class passenger. She travelled with her husband, their three daughters Alice Elizabeth, Ethel Flora and Mabel, and their son, Charles Alexander Fortune.
Fortune was the first woman to write fiction centred on the detective, her knowledge of the colonial police allowing her to narrate convincingly from this masculine perspective. Yet Fortune’s anonymity and almost exclusive employment for a popular magazine prevented her gaining wider recognition, as was enjoyed by other writers who gained ...
Jul 7, 2016 · Fortune was one of the first writers of police procedurals and between 1868 and 1908 wrote more than 500 stories for The Australian Journal. But she used a pseudonym, W.W., standing for Waif Wander, and her identity was revealed only in the 1950s.
This article seeks to stress the unconventionality of Mary Fortune’s memoirs, written beyond norms of genre and gender, in order to contribute to their re-evaluation. It addresses Fortune’s exclusion from the Australian literary histories as well as her eccentric and marginal way of life.
Aug 6, 2009 · The three 'Murder Mysteries' here published are examples of Mary Fortune's great skill in writing 'detective fiction' at this early period when the genre was in the beginning stages of a now popular form of fiction. The three stories are introduced by Lucy Sussex.
May 13, 2013 · Mary Fortune is best known for The Detective's Album, the longest-running early detective serial anywhere in the world. Written under the name Waif Wander and narrated by detective Mark Sinclair, The Detective's Album was serialized for forty years in the Australian Journal from 1868 to 1908.
Mary Fortune was not a perfect woman or a woman of means but she left an extraordinary footprint in the colonial periodical press. She specialized in light and ephemeral journal fiction, detective fiction and urban ethnographies written from the street.
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.
Mary Fortune was not a perfect woman or a woman of means but she left an extraordinary footprint in the colonial periodical press. She specialized in light and ephemeral journal fiction, detective fiction and urban ethnographies written from the street.
