Lucy Sussex

Lucy Sussex is a writer and researcher. Her latest book is Blockbuster: Fergus Hume and the Mystery of the Hansom Cab (2015), which won the History Publication award in the Victorian Community History Prizes.

Works By Lucy Sussex

The State of Motherhood
In these three books, mothers write back, documenting their personal experience and that of others, from the scientific and the sociological to the artistic. They all beg the question: is it possible to be successful both as a mother and do other
19 June. 2022
Bright and Fiery Troupers
Long before the Stella Prize, there was Stella herself, but also Ada, various Marys, Catherines and Elizabeths, Tasma, Rosa and so on.
8 June. 2020
The End of the World As We Know It
From Armageddon to Ragnarok and the Rapture, humans persist in imagining the end of the world. The religious term is eschatology, and the literary terms are many. Some are jocular (Disaster Porn), or precisely denote a sub-genre (Post-Apocalypse,
17 Sept. 2018
An Anthropocene Tale and its Writer: The Sea and Summer
Scarcely a week now goes by without a new fiction on the theme of climate change. Such works have been termed cli-fi, a truly appalling neologism. To write a full survey of the field is outside the scope of a single essay. Indeed, even to consid...
6 June. 2017
A Diva and Her Readers
‘Already a substantial Eliot arts industry exists, ranging from academe to television, and now appear yet more books on this fascinating Victorian subject, both acts of hommage. Two very different women, journalist Rebecca Mead and academic/noveli...
13 Nov. 2015
Literary Lifeboats: Goodbye Sweetheart by Marion Halligan
If we consider Australian literary rankings – about as safe an occupation as handling the nation’s venomous snakes without protective gloves – then Halligan's reputation would rest upon a pedestal not shaky, rather solid. It might not be as high a...
23 June. 2015
Antarctica starts here: When the Night Comes by Favel Parrett
When the Night Comes is a more modernist project than Past the Shallows. It focuses on the small but significant moments in life that pass almost unnoticed, even by the protagonists, yet have major consequences. Rather than regional Tasmania, the
12 Sept. 2014
Here be tygers: The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane
There is subterfuge, smuggling, in the writing of The Night Guest. It imports ‘genre’ techniques into the genre ‘literary’.
8 Apr. 2014
Keeping the darkness at bay: A Life of Madeleine St John
In 1997, the Booker Prize shortlist included a work by an Australian woman for the first time. Literary Australia was chuffed, but also surprised. Who was this Madeleine St John, published by Fourth Estate?
19 Apr. 2013