"Waif Wander " was the pen name of Mary Helena Fortune (1833-1911).
Born in Belfast, she migrated to Canada with her family, where she married. In 1855 she and her son migrated to Australia, where she married again and had a second son. Her second marriage appears to have been as unsuccessful as her first, and she supported herself by profilic writing of fiction, poems, vignettes and even serials for the many newspapers of the period.
She created police detective Mark Sinclair, who appeared as first-person narrator in a very long-running series of short stories (some 500 in all over a period of around 40 years!)
In her lifetime only a single book was published, containing a selection of the Mark Sinclair stories: "The Detective's Album: Tales of the Australian Police" (1871). It has recently been reprinted.
"Dan Lyons' Doom" was published as a serial in several regional Australian newspapers in 1884-5, and this is the first book edition. Set on a minor Victorian gold field, it is a tale of murder, retribution, guilt and rough justice.
There was naturally no cover. I have created one in a suitable period style using a public domain blank cover scan.
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