Madame Midas

A woman strikes gold in Ballarat, becomes the richest woman on the field, and finds an escaped French convict, the husband who deserted her and her own past all queuing for it. Hume wrote The Mystery of a Hansom Cab in Melbourne, published it himself when nobody would touch it, sold the rights for fifty pounds and then watched it outsell Sherlock Holmes. This is the Australian goldfields novel he wrote next. Sixty plates of docks, quays and mill interiors by painters such as W. J. Stevenson and John Buxton Knight give the goldfields their working harbour and lamplit rooms.