Fergus Hume is remembered now only as the writer of best-selling detective fiction in the nineteenth century, the first to sell more than half a million copies of one novel, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886). The customary judgment--reflected in Howard Haycraft's calling it "this shoddy pot-boiler"--is hardly a fair assessment of the book. Hume's abilities in incorporating rigorous social analysis within the detective genre deserve greater recognition.

Fergusson Wright Hume was born in England, the son of a New Zealand doctor, James Hume, who was also a founder of Dunedin College in New Zealand. His family subsequently returned to their native country, where he was educated at the Boys' High School and read law at Otago University. After a period in the New Zealand Attorney General's Office he was admitted to the bar in 1885 and later moved to Australia. By 1886 he was working in Melbourne as...