Megan Brown Megan Brown i(A84266 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 y separately published work icon Outrageous Fortunes : The Adventures of Mary Fortune, Crime-writer, and Her Criminal Son George Lucy Sussex , Megan Brown , Melbourne : La Trobe University Press , 2025 29171381 2025 single work biography

'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.'  (Publication summary)

1 The Metropolis or the Bush? Megan Brown , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature 2020; (p. 25-33)

'This chapter explores the contradictions and fallacies inherent in popular literary representations of the metropolis and the bush. It examines the way the representation was constructed retrospectively, ignoring the range of perspectives and lack of a dominant popular portrayal of the bush in the nineteenth-century periodical press. The Bulletin encouraged the simplified representation to advance its agenda of ‘Australia for Australians’ and used the popular poetry of A.B. Paterson and Henry Lawson to support this agenda. This chapter uses examples of the writing of four nineteenth-century women to challenge this simplified representation of the ‘city or the bush’ with this underlying thesis that the true Australian character somehow derives from the strength of the lone bushman.'

Source: Abstract

1 Wander Down Bourke Street Megan Brown , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: Westerly : Walking with the Flaneur 2016; (p. 31-47)
1 1 A Literary Fortune Megan Brown , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Changing The Victorian Subject 2014; (p. 105-122)
1 Mary Fortune as Sylphid : 'Blond, and Silk, and Tulle' Megan Brown , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October-November vol. 27 no. 3/4 2012; (p. 92-106)

'...When Lucy Sussex's own clever detective work revealed that the pseudynoms of W.W. and Waif Wander belonged to Fortune, an exciting chapter in colonial literary history was opened. Sussex has demonstrated convincingly that Fortune's output was prodigious: the sheer volume of her contributions published in the Australian Journal between 1865 and 1908 demands recognition, as does their quality. This essay argues that in addition to the pseudonyms identified by Sussex, at least one other set of works in the Australian Journal were written by Fortune, If, as I suggest, this work is Fortune's, it effectively doubles the number of urban observations written by her and published in the Australian Journal, and further underlines her importance in colonial literary history and women's history.' (from Author's introduction)

1 y separately published work icon 'I shall tell just such stories as I please' : Mary Fortune and the Australian Journal Megan Brown , Wollongong : 2011 10491616 2011 single work thesis

Examines Mary Fortune's writing in the Australian Journal between 1865 and 1885.

1 A Literary Fortune : Mary Fortune's Life in the Colonial Periodical Press Megan Brown , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Unsociable Sociability of Women's Lifewriting 2010; (p. 128-147)
1 2 'I shall tell just such stories as I please' : Mary Fortune and the Australian Journal Megan Brown , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October vol. 23 no. 2 2007; (p. 74-88)
1 Untitled Megan Brown , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: Margin , April no. 65 2005; (p. 36-38)

— Review of A Black Sheep Ada Cambridge , 1888-1889 single work novel
1 Louisa Atkinson and 19th Century Women's Journalism Megan Brown , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Margin , July/August no. 63 2004; (p. 19-34)
Brown portrays Louisa Atkinson as a forthright woman, an informed science writer and a concerned environmentalist, recognising that on all counts she was ahead of her times.
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