Madame Midas - Hume, Fergus
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Madame Midas (1888) is a mystery novel by Fergus Hume. Although not as successful as The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), an immediate bestseller for Hume, Madame Midas is a gripping novel with forbidden romance and a tightly wound mystery worthy of the best of Victorian fiction. From an author whose work inspired Arthur Conan Doyle, Madame Midas is a story of fortune and loss set in the shadow of Australia's nineteenth century gold rush. In the mid-nineteenth century, Robert Curtis-along with countless other desperate and adventurous men-journeyed to Australia in search of fortune. Having…mehr

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Produktbeschreibung
Madame Midas (1888) is a mystery novel by Fergus Hume. Although not as successful as The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), an immediate bestseller for Hume, Madame Midas is a gripping novel with forbidden romance and a tightly wound mystery worthy of the best of Victorian fiction. From an author whose work inspired Arthur Conan Doyle, Madame Midas is a story of fortune and loss set in the shadow of Australia's nineteenth century gold rush. In the mid-nineteenth century, Robert Curtis-along with countless other desperate and adventurous men-journeyed to Australia in search of fortune. Having established a successful mine in Ballarat, Curtis settled in Melbourne, where he married and had a daughter. In her youth, Miss Curtis was the talk of the town, and though she could have chosen any man for her husband, she found herself attracted to Mr. Villiers, a charming-yet-suspicious gentleman. Not long after their wedding, his intentions become all too clear, and soon his gambling threatens to erase the Curtis fortune. Outraged and disgraced, Mrs. Villiers flees to Ballarat, where she turns her attention to managing her father's mine. Known to the local people as Madame Midas, she maintains a hard exterior in order not only to hide the truth of her past, but to guard herself from the cruelty of men. When a pair of escaped prisoners lands on the nearby shore, however, her newfound security faces a formidable threat. Madame Midas is a tale of love lost and found, of violence and greed in a country built on shallow, unstable foundations. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Fergus Hume's Madame Midas is a classic of Australian mystery and detective fiction reimagined for modern readers.
Autorenporträt
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.