The Forgotten Authors - Volume 6: Fergus Hume to Stanley Victor Makower

Written by Fergus Hume, Violet Jacob, Lionel Johnson and 10 more

Narrated by Robert Maskell, Janet Fullerlove and Mark Rice-Oxley

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.

In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be published in any great number.

In the 15th Century Gutenberg’s printing press began the revolution to address the second and by the 19th century had gathered pace with startling speed and mass distribution. Education for the many was brought in to help people understand more of their world and, with new skills, how to have a better place within it. Now, if the powers that owned the presses and means of distribution agreed an audience would now be able to avail themselves of your ideas, your printed words.

Sadly, in the thirst for the new, the recent and the past fell from sight, relegated to dark corners and dusty shelves.

But the printed word is rarely without someone, somewhere busying themselves through piles of papers and books rediscovering what a good story is, whatever its age.

Sadly, in the thirst for the new, the recent and the past fell from sight, relegated to dark corners and dusty shelves.

But the printed word is rarely without someone, somewhere busying themselves through piles of papers and books rediscovering what a good story is, whatever its age.

In this volume we offer up a small selection of those talents whose time has now come again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Copyright Group
• Release date: May 25, 2025
• ISBN: 9781806371730

Fergus Hume

Fergus Hume (1859-1932) was an English novelist. Born in Worcestershire, Hume was the son of a civil servant of Scottish descent. At the age of three, he moved with his family to Dunedin, New Zealand, where he attended Otago Boy’s High School. In 1885, after graduating from the University of Otago with a degree in law, Hume was admitted to the New Zealand bar. He moved to Melbourne, Australia, where he worked as a clerk and embarked on his career as a writer with a series of plays. After struggling in vain to find success as a playwright, Hume turned to novels with The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), a story of mystery and urban poverty that eventually became one of the most successful works of fiction of the Victorian era. Hume, who returned to England in 1888, would go on to publish over 100 novels and stories, earning a reputation as a leading writer of popular fiction and inspiring such figures as Arthur Conan Doyle, whose early detective novels were modeled after Hume’s. Despite the resounding success of his debut work of fiction, Hume died in relative obscurity at a modest cottage in Thundersley.