'Colonial Melbournians were mad about Sensation fiction - full of thrills and scandal; divorce, bigamy, mistaken identity and murder. Sensational Melbourne takes us through the libraries, the shops, the tramways, the theatres, the back lanes and the drawing rooms of Marvelous Melbourne, and shows how the city was built on words as much as gold. It traces the passage of the most popular novel of the nineteenth century, Lady Audley's Secret, from England to Melbourne's port and through the cultural byways of Melbourne out through the suburbs, and into Australian literature.' -- Back cover.