Fergus Hume

Fergus Hume entered literary life in 1880s Melbourne and became a prolific novelist after moving to England. He first published The Mystery of a Hansom Cab in 1886 after local publishers declined it; the book became an early landmark of popular detective fiction. His much larger mystery bibliography includes Hagar Of The Pawnshop, The Green Mummy, The Bishop’s Secret, and The Opal Serpent. Project Gutenberg preserves four of those titles, while the Online Books Page also records the first as Hagar of the Pawn-Shop. The Australian Dictionary of Biography estimates that Hume produced about 140 novels after settling in England.