Arsene Lupin

Publisher Marketing: This early work was originally a 4-part play written by Maurice Leblanc and Francis de Croisset in 1908, and subsequently novelized by Leblanc and published in 1909 with Edgar Jepson. We are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Maurice Marie Emile Leblanc was born on 11th November 1864 in Rouen, Normandy, France. He was a novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective, Arsene Lupin. Leblanc spent his early education at the Lycee Pierre Corneille (in Rouen), and after studying in several countries and dropping out of law school, he settled in Paris and began to write fiction. From the start, Leblanc wrote both short crime stories and longer novels - and his lengthier tomes, heavily influenced by writers such as Flaubert and Maupassant, were critically admired, but met with little commercial success. Leblanc was largely considered little more than a writer of short stories for various French periodicals when the first Arsene Lupin story appeared. It was published as a series of stories in the magazine 'Je Sais Trout', starting on 15th July, 1905. Clearly created at editorial request under the influence of, and in reaction to, the wildly successful Sherlock Holmes stories, the roguish and glamorous Lupin was a surprise success and Leblanc's fame and fortune beckoned. In total, Leblanc went on to write twenty-one Lupin novels or collections of short stories. On this success, he later moved to a beautiful country-side retreat in Etreat (in the Haute-Normandie region in north-western France), which today is a museum dedicated to the Arsene Lupin books. Leblanc was awarded the Legion d'Honneur - the highest decoration in France - for his services to literature. He died in Perpignan (the capital of the Pyrenees-Orientales department in southern France) on 6th November 1941, at the age of seventy-six. He is buried in the prestigious Montparnasse Cemetery of Paris. Contributor Bio:  Leblanc, Maurice Ne en 1864 a Rouen, Maurice Leblanc reve tres tot de devenir ecrivain. Mais a cette epoque, on est surtout friand de feuilletons et de nouvelles pour les journaux: c'est ainsi qu'en 1907 nait Arsene Lupin, un des plus beaux et des plus populaires heros de la litterature policiere francaise. Contributor Bio:  Jepson, Edgar Leblanc was born in Rouen, Normandy, where he was educated at the Lycee Pierre Corneille. After studying in several countries and dropping out of law school, he settled in Paris and began to write fiction, both short crime stories and longer novels; his novels, heavily influenced by writers like Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, were critically admired but met with little commercial success. Leblanc was largely considered little more than a writer of short stories for various French periodicals when the first Arsene Lupin story appeared in a series of short stories serialized in the magazine Je Sais Tout, starting in No. 6, dated 15 July 1905. Clearly created at editorial request under the influence of, and in reaction to, the wildly successful Sherlock Holmes stories, the roguish and glamorous Lupin was a surprise success and Leblanc's fame and fortune beckoned. In total, Leblanc went on to write twenty-one Lupin novels or collections of short stories. The character of Lupin might have been based by Leblanc on French anarchist Marius Jacob, whose trial made headlines in March 1905; it is also possible that Leblanc had also read Octave Mirbeau's Les 21 jours d'un neurasthenique (1901), which features a gentleman thief named Arthur Lebeau, and seen Mirbeau's comedy Scrupules (1902), whose main character is a gentleman thief. It was not influenced by E. W. Hornung's gentleman thief, A. J. Raffles, created in 1899, whom Leblanc had not read.