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Mary Helena Fortune: An Independent Fly in the Webs of Victorian Society

Mary Helena Fortune (c.1833–1909) was a pioneer Australian crime fiction writer. At a time when marriage and domesticity still largely defined women's lives, in her autobiographical journalism Fortune freely admitted to being self-financing. She claimed that her tea tasted better when she remembers that she has “earned every penny of the money that bought it.” It was unusual for a Victorian woman. And as her memoirs and journalistic prose testify, Fortune was anything but usual. The story of her life, her writing, her husbands, sons and lovers is extraordinary, and was potentially dangerous for Fortune, given the hypocritical morals of the time. Thus, being fully aware of the webs the Victorian society set for independent flies, Fortune wrote under a pseudonym of Waif Wander which sheltered her, and protected her income. Her memoirs, partly fictionalised, a common Victorian genre, reveal an extraordinary woman and extraordinary times in Australian history.

Mary Fortune, Waif Wonder, autobiography

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