Lucy Sussex, a long-time member of Sisters in Crime, has won the History Publication Award for Blockbuster! Fergus Hume and the Mystery of a Hansom Cab (Text Publishing).
The award is one of several Victorian Community History Awards presented in Melbourne on 19 October by the Public Record Office Victoria in partnership with the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, and funded by the Victorian Government.
A few months ago Lucy talked to Carmel Shute, Sisters in Crime National Co-convenor (and historian by trade), at St Kilda Library about how and whyThe Mystery of the Hansom Cab (1886) became the fastest-selling detective novel of the 1800s, and Australia’s first literary blockbuster.
Lucy is also fiction writer, reviewer and a pioneering historian of women’s crime writing. Her historical works includeWomen Writers and Detectives in Nineteenth-Century Crime Fiction:The Mothers of the Mystery Genre (Palgrave MacMillan) andThe Fortunes of Mary Fortune (Penguin Books Australia). Lucy rediscovered Ellen Davitt after whom Sisters in Crime’s annual book awards are named.
She has edited four anthologies and five short-story collections. Her award-winning fiction includes books for younger readers and the novelThe Scarlet Rider.