The first edition The Mystery of a Hansom Cab allegedly sold some five thousand copies and there was soon a second edition or second printing. This also sold out, leading to a third printing in 1887. The book, followed not long after by its author, was transferred to London, where it was issued again and again by the Hansom Cab Publishing Company. There are claims that The Mystery of a Hansom Cab sold more than 750,000 copies in Hume’s lifetime, making it a major money spinner for some but not for Hume, who had sold the copyright for £50 to the consortium behind the Hansom Cab Publishing Company. After the success of the Hansom Cab, Hume stayed on in England. He wrote (or churned out) more than 140 novels, some good, others potboilers, over the next four decades until his death in 1932.

There is, of course, much more to Hume’s story than this brief summary. The lack of any personal papers or relevant publishing archive makes trying to tell the story of his life and his book difficult.

One of the intriguing puzzles about The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is just how many copies of the three Melbourne editions were printed and sold. The entry for Hume in Wikipedia makes the wild claim of 100,000 copies. Sussex’s case for it being a blockbuster, besides the quality of the novel itself, is centred on the marketing skills of Frederick Trischler, the book’s publisher, both here and in England. A one-time merchant seaman, commercial traveller, and advertising canvasser, Trischler appears to have never let the truth stand in the way of a good sales pitch.

Fergus Hume (courtesy of the State Library of Victoria, via Wikimedia Commons)

Sussex uses her network in the book trade to seek the opinion of publishers, dealers, and collectors as to whether the claimed sales and print runs of a Hansom Cab are plausible or not. Some support the claims, others dismiss them. This reviewer – one of those thanked in the book’s acknowledgments – is among the sceptics.

Only two copies of the first edition have appeared on the market in the last 100 years, the second found a decade ago at the bottom of a box at a Melbourne suburban general furniture and household goods auction. This find bought the known number of copies of the first edition to five. There are no copies known of the supposed second edition and only one copy of the third, making an overall tally of six copies from a print run of up to 25,000, according to Sussex.

‘Despite its fame and longevity, the story of its writing, publication, and the life of the author have all been something of a mystery’

Even allowing for the fragile nature of these early Melbourne editions – staple bound in wrappers – one would think that there would have to be more copies still around if the print runs claimed for it are anywhere near true. To compare, shortly after Hume’s mystery was published, it was parodied by one ‘W. Humer Ferguson’ in his The Mystery of a Wheelbarrow. There are seven copies in Australian libraries, the same number as Joseph Fraser’s self-published Melbourne and Mars (1889). The print runs for these two would have been small, two to five hundred at the most, reflecting the number of copies still in existence.

Blockbuster! is unlikely to become one. This is not a criticism of it, given the relatively narrow interest in Fergus Hume. It is, however, as the blurb says, ‘an engaging story of a book that would help define the genre of crime fiction’. But despite Sussex’s diligent digging, there are still some mysteries about Hume and his great Melbourne book that may never be solved.