The Mystery of a Hansom Cab de Fergus Hume

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

Fergus Hume

Fergus Hume (1859-1932)

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 10 ian 2007

Fergus Hume was an early 20th English writer. Hume spent his childhood in New Zealand and then moved to Australia. In 1888 he moved to England and produced over 100 novels and numerous short stories. His mystery stories are considered to be the precursors of the modern detective story. In the 1800's Hume's detective stories out sold Sherlock Holmes novels. This adventure takes place on the streets of Melbourne when a driver of a Hansom cab pulls up to a police station and announces he has the body of what appears to be the victim of a murder.

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Notă biografică

Fergusson Wright Hume (1859 - 1932), known as Fergus Hume, was a prolific English novelist. Finding that the novels of Émile Gaboriau were then very popular in Melbourne, Hume obtained and read a set of them and determined to write a novel of the same kind. The result was The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, set in Melbourne, with descriptions of poor urban life based on his knowledge of Little Bourke Street. It was self-published in 1886 and became a great success. Because he sold the British and American rights for 50 pounds, however, he reaped little of the potential financial benefit. It became the best-selling mystery novel of the Victorian era; in 1990 John Sutherland called it the "most sensationally popular crime and detective novel of the century". This novel inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to write A Study in Scarlet, which introduced the fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle remarked, "Hansom Cab was a slight tale, mostly sold by 'puffing'." After the success of his first novel and the publication of another, Professor Brankel's Secret (c.?1886), Hume returned to England in 1888. His third novel was titled Madame Midas and it was based on the life of the mine and newspaper owner Alice Ann Cornwell. This book became a play and her estranged husband, John Whiteman, sued over its content. Hume resided in London for a few years and then moved to the Essex countryside where he lived in Thundersley for 30 years. Eventually he produced more than 100 novels and short stories.