Mary Fortune was perhaps the most prolific and versatile of the women writing in nineteenth-century Australia, a contributor to periodicals over a fifty-year period. Literature was her livelihood, and her bibliography comprises more than five hundred items, mostly short fiction, although she also wrote novels for serialization, journalism (she was one of the first women journalists in Australia), poetry, and a memoir. None of these works were published under her real name but under her initials, "M. H. F.," or the pseudonyms "Waif Wander" and "W. W." During her lifetime she was completely unknown to her audience, a mystery, with her real name, identity, and even her gender concealed. Her publishers guarded her privacy, which was so total that her death passed without public notice, the exact date even now unknown. But for the lucky chance of a book collector, J. K. Moir, who embarked on a detective...