VOOZH about

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mary_Fortune

⇱ Talk:Mary Fortune - Wikipedia

Jump to content
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Mary Fortune article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.
Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
👁 Image
This article is written in Australian English, which has its own spelling conventions (centre, colour, realise, program, travelled) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
👁 Featured article
Mary Fortune is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
👁 Main Page trophy
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on February 26, 2026.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
October 10, 2025Good article nomineeListed
December 4, 2025Featured article candidatePromoted
👁 Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on October 12, 2025.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the son of Mary Fortune – one of the earliest female writers of detective fiction – was a career criminal?
Current status: Featured article

Did you know nomination

[edit]
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as , or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by TarnishedPath talk 09:44, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[]

  • ... that the identity of Mary Fortune, one of the earliest female writers of detective fiction, was not rediscovered until decades after her death?
5x expanded by MCE89 (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

MCE89 (talk) 15:44, 4 October 2025 (UTC).[]

@MCE89, I don't see that Fortune was "one of the earliest female writers of detective fiction" in the article. TarnishedPathtalk 09:24, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[]
@TarnishedPath The lead says that Fortune ...is believed to have been the first woman to write detective fiction. The body of the article contains The historian Lucy Sussex believes that this was likely the world's first work of fiction written by a woman from the perspective of a detective and The Detective's Album was the world's first published collection of detective stories written by a woman. The specific source that I cited for ALT2 also says She was among the earliest women detective writers in the world I softened the article's claim slightly for the hook to avoid a "first" hook, but I think the article definitely supports the claim that she was at the very least one of the earliest. MCE89 (talk) 09:36, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[]
I'm going to promote a slight variation on ALT2 to make the meaning clearer.
  • ALT2a: ... that the son of Mary Fortune—one of the earliest female writers of detective fiction—was a career criminal?
TarnishedPathtalk 09:43, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[]

GA review

[edit]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

GA toolbox
Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:Mary Fortune/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: MCE89 (talk · contribs) 15:44, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[]

Reviewer: LEvalyn (talk · contribs) 20:58, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]


I will take on this review! Typically I like to make small prose edits directly, to save on back-and-forth, but as always you should feel free to revise or discuss any that you don't consider improvements. Looking forward to it! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 20:58, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]

Overall the article is looking great! Very thorough and interesting. I have a few suggestions below, but I could be talked out of most of them; I'd just like to hear your thoughts. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 23:01, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]
MCE89, just a ping to be sure you've seen that this is pending your response. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 04:48, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[]
@LEvalyn Thank you so much for the review, and apologies for the delayed reply! Confirming that I've seen this and should be able to take on your suggestions in the next day or two. MCE89 (talk) 04:54, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[]
@LEvalyn Thanks again and sorry for the delay, just needed to wait until I was back with my hardcopy sources. All excellent suggestions — have replied below. MCE89 (talk) 13:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[]
MCE89, no worries about the timing, the edits were worth the wait! The article is looking wonderful now, and I'm happy to pass it as a GA. Thanks for writing such a fascinating article and being parts of WiG! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:44, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[]
Good Article review progress box
Criteria: 1a. prose (👁 Image
) 1b. MoS (👁 Image
) 2a. ref layout (👁 Image
) 2b. cites WP:RS (👁 Image
) 2c. no WP:OR (👁 Image
) 2d. no WP:CV (👁 Image
)
3a. broadness (👁 Image
) 3b. focus (👁 Image
) 4. neutral (👁 Image
) 5. stable (👁 Image
) 6a. free or tagged images (👁 Image
) 6b. pics relevant (👁 Image
)
Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked 👁 Image
 are unassessed

Comments

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  • I did a pass through the prose and everything looks great. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]
  • Some of my prose edits involved re-framing the explanation of the initials, which aren't exactly their own pseudonyms (eg W.W. is just another way of signing as Waif Wander); I want to particularly highlight that as something you may want to discuss. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]
    Yep I think that's a good point. She used "W. W." and "Waif Wander" for different types of writing, but agree that they're not different pseudonyms since her readers would have understood them as belonging to the same writer. I've expanded on this a little more and added an explanation of when and why she started using "W. W." instead of Waif Wander. MCE89 (talk) 13:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[]
  • Lots of great public domain images, appropriately tagged and well chosen. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]
  • For the source check I looked at cites 5, 6, 15, 39, 41, 69, 77, 81, 84, 88, 105, 113, and 116 as numbered in this diff. I chose some of these specifically to confirm the various "firsts", which do check out. Everything verifies nicely without copyvio or close paraphrase. Unfortunately I wasn't able to access the 2025 biography that the article relies most heavily on, but based on this spot check I have no concerns. The overall reference list is all appropriate RS, no red flags. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 23:01, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]

Suggestions

[edit]
  • I don't know Australian geography well enough to know how the Mount Alexander goldfield in the picture relates to the various named goldfields mentioned in the "Life in the goldfields" section. Can you make the link between the picture and the text a little clearer by adding something like "near Mount Alexander" to whichever goldfield was near it? ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]
    Done MCE89 (talk) 13:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[]
  • his mother may have been living in a de facto relationship -- can we say with whom? ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]
    Added MCE89 (talk) 13:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[]
  • Thinking about "focus", I notice that some information is repeated -- e.g., a summary of the content of her works appears in the biography when she wrote them, and in the sections on her works; the article explains her as a flâneuse three times. I do think each section works well on its own, but I wonder if some of this duplication can be reduced -- thoughts? ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]
    Yep agreed, I've had a go at removing most of the detailed description of her writing from the "biography" section and trying to separate the sections out a little more. Let me know if you think there's anything else that could be reshuffled. MCE89 (talk) 13:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[]
    This is looking good too! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:44, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[]
  • Another "focus" thought is that there's quite a lot about her son's life of crime, where she periodically gets lost. I tried to address that a little where I saw low-hanging fruit, but I'd like your eyes on it too. Can we rhetorically frame the paragraphs (or a section) more strongly about the effect on Mary as his mother? Are there details that we could summarize more concisely? ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]
    Good point, I was starting to have exactly the same thought as I was finishing this up. I've tried to trim some of the details of George's convictions and have incorporated a bit more on how his life affected the themes of Mary's writing (e.g. I had completely forgotten to mention the fact that she stopped writing detective stories entirely for a few years after his first sentencing!). Let me know how you think that looks. MCE89 (talk) 13:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[]
    Oh, this is much better!! It doesn't seem like we've lost too much detail about George but it also no longer feels like the article got sidetracked into being his biography instead -- the new details about Mary are very informative. Nicely done! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:33, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[]
  • Sussex 2007 p 452 offers some commentary on George that could be useful for connecting the info on him back to her: He does not apparently feature in his mother’s fiction. Her crimes are the big melodramas of murder and bushranging rather than the theft of four pounds from somebody’s house (one of his actual offences). ~ L 🌸 (talk) 23:01, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Comments from Noleander

[edit]

I was asked to provide some feedback on this article, in preparation for a possible FA nomination.

  • Overall, the article looks outstanding, and is nearly ready for FA nomination.
  • Consider alphabetizing the Categories at bottom of the article: not required for FA, but every little bit helps.
  • The Australian Journal was a weekly magazine that borrowed from the successful London Journal. Borrowed what? articles or style?
  • It attempted to attract readers by heavily featuring locally-written fiction "heavily featured" sounds awkward. Maybe delete "heavily"?
  • "The fortunes of Mary: authenticity, notoriety, and the crime-writing life". Women's Writing. In sources, article is capitalizing all words of the book/journal title; but only capitalizing first (non proper name) word of article title. Some FA reviewers are picky about that. I use the Title Case (all words initial cap) for all titles, so I've never had an issue. It is not a WP MOS requirement, but it may make FA go smoother if you use initial cap for all words in all titles (except prepositions and a/an/the). PS: WP MOS says that the capitalization of a source title does NOT have to mimic what the source itself uses, so e.g. if the source newspaper only capitalized the 1st word, the WP editor can safely capitalize all words - that is not a violation of MOS.
  • p. 197,219. p vs pp error. There is a tool called "Ref Check" or "Show Ref Check" you can run to identify such errors. It appears in the "Tools" menu after you enable it.
  • location London There are five book cites; four have "location" field, one does not. Some FA reviewers insist on uniformity and will want all books or no books to have a location field. I always omit "location" for all sources, just to be safe.
  • ISBN 9780140123029 article has some ISBNs with hyphens, some without. Some FA reviewers will insist on all with or all without.
  • Police records of George Fortune Consider inserting "son" ... many readers will quickly scan only the pics/captions, so they should be self-contained, if possible.
  • Prose quality: overall, the prose is excellent quality, good grammar, easy to understand.
  • I think if you address the above items, the article should be ready for an FA nomination. If you want to be double-sure, you can list it for a Peer Review at WP:Peer Review. To get the Peer Review done in a week or so: do this: (1) add the article to PR list; (2) look thru other articles listed there and find and editor that may be interested in this article; (3) post a note on their Talk page asking if they want to exchange Peer Reviews ... 99% of them will agree.
  • Before starting the FA nomination: double check two things: (a) all images have valid "free to use" licensing information; and (b) all citations have correct page # and the source material supports the body text. The latter is key: the rule in FA is the first article a nominator nominates must be heavily scrutinized by reviewers to make sure the citations are valid. It will be bad if a reviewer finds that a cite is not consistent with the body text.
  • Some reviewers may remark on the reliance on a single source: Sussex. That is inevitable with minor/obscure topics, so it is not a problem. But, you may want to inoculate the nomination by mentioning the paucity of source material in the introductory paragraph (that you supply at the time you create the FA nomination).
  • One thing to bear in mind: no matter how perfect the article is, FA reviewers will always find some suggested changes, so be prepared for that. If you want the FA review to go smoother, some nominators will implement all suggested changes (that are sensible and not incorrect), even suggestions they find distasteful. That is a choice you will need to make: some nominators have no problem pushing-back against suggestions, but it can delay the nomination process. Your call.
Great advice from Noleander. It's not unknown to have one reviewer make a suggestion, and another later suggest the opposite! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:01, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[]
In fact, I'll make one such contradiction, by saying that I don't think the box quote should be changed into a block quote; it's not a "pull quote", which is a chunk of article text made big and catchy like in a magazine, but instead, functionally, an "illustration" making up a shortcoming in the article's available visual material. Using them this way is quite common in literature articles, eg Dracula#Reception. Everything else, though, I think is very wise!~ L 🌸 (talk) 06:44, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[]

Incorrect countries

[edit]

This article seems to keep using incorrect country names. Previously it used Northern Ireland, despite the fact that it never existed in their lifetime. Now it's using Canada a lot, despite the fact it wasn't Canada at that time (not until 1867.) Montreal and where she moved was Lower Canada during this time range and Quebec didn't exist at all during the time she was there (Quebec City did however.) Just because the source is apparently using modern terminology (which calls some questions on the source, but not interested in going there), doesn't mean we should. We should be using the country names and references of what they were at the time being discussed, not modern names that didn't exist then. Canterbury Tail talk 00:59, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[]

@Canterbury Tail I’m a bit confused by your edit summary saying that Canada didn’t exist at the time. Admittedly I’m no expert on Canadian history, but Wikipedia tells me that the Province of Canada was established in 1841. In any case, it’s not like I’ve linked at any point to the article about the modern country of Canada. I’ve just said that she lived in a place known as Canada, which I don’t think is inaccurate. So I don’t really think we need to change every instance of “Canada” to “Lower Canada” throughout the article. For instance, the country of Australia didn’t exist at the time either, so technically she lived in the Colony of Victoria, but we can still refer to Australia as that was the name that the colonies were known by.
I also strongly disagree that the sources are using terminology incorrectly or that this casts doubts on their reliability - the sources I’ve used make it very clear what the names of these places were at the time. The mention of Northern Ireland was my mistake, not the source’s, and I appreciate you correcting it. MCE89 (talk) 01:30, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[]
To expand on this slightly, my worry about this change in particular is that we don't actually know when Mary Fortune moved to Canada. My understanding is that before 1841, you're correct that the name should be given as "Montreal, Lower Canada". But if it was between 1841 and 1849, the name should probably instead be "Montreal, Canada East, Province of Canada", because the name Lower Canada was not officially in use during those years. Given that we don't know the true date, my sense is that it would be most accurate to just say that she moved to "Montreal, Canada" some time during her childhood. Let me know what you think - alternatively we could just change the sentence to She moved to Montreal as a child...? MCE89 (talk) 04:16, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[]
Honestly yes, I think you're probably correct there. Do we know it was Montreal that they moved to? I'm perhaps too hasty, but I got the impression from the article originally that it was clearer when she moved but it has evolved a lot since then. Canterbury Tail talk 18:17, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[]
Yeah looking over again, you're completely right and I'm wrong. I'm going to bow out of the article that you've worked so hard on. Canterbury Tail talk 18:39, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[]
Categories: