AustLit

The novel is a tale of romance and the occult. Begins:

"How can any one hope to transfer that to canvas? asked the artist, surveying the many coloured earth and sky and sea with despairing eyes.

"Easily enough," replied the girl at his elbow, "those who see twice as vividly as others, can make others see once as vividly as they do. That is what we call genius."

"A large word for my small capabilities, Miss Enistor. Am I a genius?"

"Ask yourself, Mr. Hardwick, for none other than yourself can answer truly."

'Outside his special gift the artist was not over clever, so he lounged on the yielding turf of the slope to turn the speech over in his mind and wait results. This tall solidly built Saxon only arrived at conclusions by slow degrees of laborious reflection. With his straight athletic figure, closely clipped fair hair and a bronzed complexion, against which his moustache looked almost white, he resembled a soldier rather than a painter.'

'A contender for the earliest female amateur detective, Hagar is a 'Gypsy Detective', beautiful in a dark Romany way, sensuous and intelligent, who runs a Lambeth pawnshop she inherited from her uncle where she solves crimes brought to her by her customers. She solves her crimes more by common sense than by deduction, but it's a great way to build customer loyalty.'

Source:

Russell James, Great British Fictional Detectives, UK: Remember When, 2009, p.191.

A lost race adventure novel in which Captain Fisk searches for, and eventually discovers the island of Isk, the South Pacific home of the Awazils - a race of people descended from the ancient Greeks and who continue their traditions and culture. A review published in the Western Mail (Perth) in 1896 further records:

The Captain Flick of Mr Fergus Hume's romance is a modern edition of the adventurous, free-booting sea dog for which the Western counties of England were so famous in years gone by. The object of the expedition upon which he sets out, in a well-equipped and well found vessel from Plymouth, is as he naively puts it, to restore the civilization the statue of Aphrodite, carved by Praxiteles for the Temple of Cythera. It is hardly necessary to say, however, that the motive impelling him to this strange quest is not as pure and ardent desire to discharge a signal service to art, but the essentially sordid ambition to obtain possession of the statue in order that he may dispose of it for a huge sum of money. He and his companions experience some strange and thrilling adventures in their search for and on the island of Isk, located by the author off the coast of Australia, in the Indian Ocean. Whatever his defects, Mr Fergus Hume has no lack of imagination; and in The Expedition of Captain Flick, many are likely to find entertainment in turning to its pages for recreation (10 April 1896, p.5).  

Contains seven modern fairy tales discovered in King Oberon's library during a visit to Faeryland. It is a collection of moral fables for children, not adults, despite the title.