'The Mystery of Major Molineux is a strange and weird production, evidently founded on a fact connected with the early history of Tasmania. As a psychological study it approaches in subtlety to some of the most successful efforts of the author of Adam Bede; while for intensity of sustained interest and soul-thrilling excitement it is only surpassed by Edgar Allen Poe in The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
'That the story is based upon fact does not detract from its interest, but rather lends an air of vraisemblance to a story which would otherwise be too appalling. It is an introspective study, a psychological romance, a social drama - worthy of the author of His Natural Life.'
[Source: Burra Record 22 June 1881, p.2]
Jamison Centre : Mulini Press , 1996"The narrator of his ghost story, a medical practitioner, becomes a convict after he is wrongly accused of his wife’s murder and transported to the Australian colonies to work in Fremantle building roads. After landing in Australia he seeks his liberty by fleeing into the bush with two fellow convicts. Taking advantage of the capture and shooting of his accomplices, the narrator makes his escape into the wilderness—travelling to a “far off and as yet unnamed portion of Western Australia” (Nisbet 116). Wandering delirious in a hostile environment, Nisbet’s narrator, who is “expectant of something ghoulish and unnatural” to come upon him from “the sepulchral gloom and mystery” (110), suddenly comes upon “a house of two storeys”.
Source: "National Hauntings: The Architecture of Australian Ghost Stories" by David Crouch.
Jamison Centre : Mulini Press , 1997John Sidney came to Australia in 1840. He spent ten years in the colony. On his return to England he told his brother Samuel about his experiences in Australia. Samuel wrote them down and they were published in Household Words 1850-1852. John returned to Australia and sent news back to his brother. Samuel Sidney never visited Australia. His novel Gallops and Gossips in the Bush of Australia is based on his brother's information.
Canberra : Mulini Press , 2006'This incredible writer had been largely forgotten and was unknown as a person until Lucy Sussex took up her cause and went in search of her life.
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.' (Publisher's blurb)
Canberra : Mulini Press , 2009