The Green Mummy — Free PDF Download

Download The Green Mummy by Fergus Hume free, in PDF format, no sign-up required.

About the Book

Fergus Hume published The Green Mummy in 1908, at the height of the Edwardian public’s fascination with “mummy fiction,” a minor thriller subgenre riding on renewed interest in archaeology and ancient Egypt.

The story opens with Professor Braddock, an obsessive and fairly unscrupulous Egyptologist, acquiring a rare Peruvian mummy sealed inside an unusual jade green sarcophagus, hoping to compare South American burial rites with Egyptian ones. He sends his assistant Sidney Bolton to ship the artifact home, but Bolton vanishes en route. When the sarcophagus finally arrives and is opened, Braddock is horrified to find not his mummy but Bolton’s dead body stuffed inside. The story then follows Archie Hope, a young man hoping to marry Braddock’s stepdaughter Lucy, who is told he can only have Braddock’s blessing if he solves the murder and tracks down the missing mummy. The investigation pulls in a scheming widow, a vengeful foreign nobleman whose family originally owned the mummy, and Braddock’s loyal Polynesian servant Cockatoo, before the killer and thief are finally exposed and the mummy is returned, somewhat grudgingly, to its rightful owners.

The novel is very much a product of its time, treating foreign artifacts and, at points, foreign people as curiosities to be owned or displayed by Westerners, and Braddock’s willingness to sacrifice basic decency for the sake of an archaeological prize is really the engine of the whole plot. Hume himself had one massive early hit, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, and spent much of the rest of his career, over 130 novels in total, chasing that same success with genre thrillers like this one.

It’s not a work of high literature, but it’s a genuinely useful snapshot of what popular pulp mystery fiction looked like in the Edwardian era, including its uncomfortable colonial attitudes, most visible in the novel’s portrayal of the servant character Cockatoo.

Quick Facts

Title	The Green Mummy
Author	Fergus Hume (1859–1932)
First Published	1908
Genre	Mystery
Format	PDF
Price	Free

Frequently Asked Questions

Is The Green Mummy free to download?
Yes. Published in 1908, it is fully in the public domain worldwide.

Is this the same author as The Mystery of a Hansom Cab?
Yes. Fergus Hume wrote that earlier bestseller and spent much of his career, over 130 novels, trying to match its success.

Does the novel reflect its era’s attitudes?
Yes, noticeably. It reflects early 20th century colonial attitudes toward foreign artifacts and people, most visible in its portrayal of a supporting character.