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Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941) |
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French author and journalist, known
as the
creator of Arsène Lupin, master of disguises, the French
gentleman-thief turned detective. Maurice Leblanc
was a very prolific writer – he published over 60 novels and short
stories. His famous hero appeared first
time in the crime story 'L'arrestation d'Arsène Lupin,' which
was written for periodical Je sais tout in 1905. Lupin was a
forerunner of Simon Templar (the Saint) and
other adventurous rogues of modern crime. "He worked at his profession for a living, but also for his amusement. He gave the impression of a dramatist who thoroughly enjoys his own plays and who stands in the wings laughing heartily at the comic dialogue and diverting situations which he himself has invented. . . . Yes, he was decidedly an artist in his way . . . " (The Exploits of Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, London: The Bodley Head, 1909, p. 63; originally published in French as Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur, 1907) Maurice Marie Émile Leblanc was born in Rouen into a wealthy
and cultured family. He was the second child of Emile Leblanc, who was
of Italian ancestry, and Blance Brohy; she died in 1885. At the age of
four the young Maurice was saved from a burning house. When the war of
1870 broke out, Maurice was six. After education at the lycée Corneille
in Rouen, in Germany (Berlin) and Italy, Leblanc worked for the family
firm. He then studied law in Paris but abandoned business career to
become a pulp crime writer and police reporter for French periodicals
and newspapers, such as Figaro, Gil Blas, and Echo de Paris.
Des couples (1891) and Une femme (1893, A Woman), Leblanc's first books, enjoyed only a moderate success. L'Enthousiasme (1901) was an autobiographical novel. In 1899 Leblanc married Marie-Ernestine Lalanne; they divorced in 1895. With his second wife, Margaret, he spent many summers in Gueures, in the Haute-Normandie region in northern France. Leblanc's early fiction showed the influence of Gustave
Flaubert, who was the brother of the family doctor, and Guy de
Maupassant. He had long career as a writer for periodicals, but it was
not until the creation of Arsène Lupin, when he gained in his forties
international fame, equaled only by that of Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Lupin, the ultimate gentleman
criminal, kept Leblanc busy for the next twenty-five years. Bound to
his own creation, Leblanc once said, that "Lupin follows me everywhere.
He is not my shadow, I am his." ('Blanc,
Maurice (1864-1941),' in The
Historical Dictionary of French Literature by John Flower,
Lanham, MD and Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2013, p. 85) Lupin's character was born by an accidental assignment from Pierre Laffitte, the publisher of a new monthly review, Je Sais Tout (I know everything), which was modelled on the Strand, at that time an avant-garde magazine. Laffitte commissioned Leblanc to write a story with a Holmes or Raffles type hero. Instead, Leblanc created a character which was the opposite of both of them – a carefree rogue adventurer after the model of Ponson de Terrail's Rocambole (1866). Pierre Latiffe urged Leblanc to write more. Leblanc himself was hailed as "the French Conan Doyle" in advertisements. Leblanc's hero met the great rival, Sherlock Holmes in Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmès (1908) and outwitted the English master detective. Around the time of Lupin's appearance, the French press
reported of a new phenomena, "the gentleman burglar." Soon it was taken
for granted that there is a new type of criminal who wore a frock-coat,
top hat, white gloves, monocle, and cane. However, these were not Lupin
everyday garments. First Leblanc called his hero Arsène Lopin, after a
Parisian councilor, but when the real Lopin protested, he changed the
name. 'L'arrestation d'Arsène Lupin' (The Arrest of Arsene Lupin)
appeared in English in The
Exploits of Arsene Lupin (1909). Alexander Louis Teixeira de
Mattos, who translated Leblanc's works into English, was a multilingual
talent, who translated also from the Danish, Dutch, German, West
Flemish. In the United States Lupin first introduced to readers in 1907 in The Exploits of Arsene Lupin. The Popular Magazine serialized The Hollow Needle (L'Aiguille
creuse) in 1910. Leblanc was "a quiet, friendly man with a large moustache who
liked to play chess and to write in his glass-enclosed study, designed
to catch every ray of natural light." ('Leblanc,
Maurice,' in World Authors,
1900-1950: Volume Two, edited by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew
C. Kimmes, New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1996, pp. 1509-1510)
In 1912 he became in a member of the French Legion of
Honour. Most of the year he lived in Passy, writing in his garden.
Summers he spent on the Normandy coast, near the medieval port of
Honfleur, favored also by such painters as Courbet and Renoir. Leblanc's sister, the singer and actress Georgette Leblanc,
was the
companion of the Belgian author Maurice
Maeterlinck, with whom she lived for 23 years. Charlotte wrote a
short novel, Le Choix de la vie (1904,
The Choise of Life), about the love lives of two women. From
1923 she was the companion of Margaret Anderson, they both were
disciples of occultist George Gurdjieff. "Until the Nazi occupation Leblanc was known to be living in retirement near Paris; no word has come from him since. (But he definitely did not die in 1926, as Willard Huntington Wright erroneously stated in The World's Great Detective Stories.) He is described as a quiet, friendly man of medium height, with a large, cheerful face, bright, kindly eyes, and a large mustache over a humorous mouth." (Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story by Howard Haycraft, New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1941, p. 106) Maurice Leblanc died on
November 6, 1941, in Perpignan, in southern France near the Spanish
border, where he had fled with his family to escape the German
occupation. His grave is at the Montparnasse cemetery, Paris. Because Lupin had been arrested in the introductory story, the second told about his time in prison, and in the third he escaped. The first nine adventures were collected in Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur (1907), which included a parody of Holmes (or Homlock Shears, as the name was written due to copyright issues), 'Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late.' Following threatening letters from Conan Doyle's lawyers, Leblanc called Lupin's adversary Herlock Sholmes in the following tales published in Je Sais Tout. Most of Holmes' adventures had been published in France between 1902 and 1907. Conan Doyle was also aware of Lupin's existence, although there is no reference to him in Doyle's stories. Lupin
is a master of disguise (his physical appearance is not described in
detail), whose criminal activities have
more or less "unselfish" grounds. He has a lot of aliases: Prince
Renine, Luis Perenna, Jim Barnett, Paul Sernine, Captain Jeanniot,
Horace Velmont, Paul Daubreuil, Bernard d'Andrezy, Désire Baudru,
Cavaliere Florianai, Jean Daspray, Ralph de Limezy, Jean d'Enneris,
Victor Hautin, le Duc de Charmerace, Lenormand. (Detectionary, edited by Otto
Penzler, Chris Steinbunner & Marvin Lachman, New York: Ballantine
Books, 1983, p. 130) Although he operates mostly outside
the law, he is brave and chivalrious. If he steals a painting, it is so
that it may be genuinely appreciated. Lupin amuses himself making fools
of the police. Under the name M. Lenormand he becomes Chief of
Detectives. His opponent is the inspector Ganimard from the Sûrete. Later during his underworld career Lupin worked more in
consort with
the police, and in Les Dents du tigre
(1921) he helped the Police Prefect Desmalions to capture a murderer.
Adopting the name Don Luis Perenna, Lupin marries and lives with his
wife in the village of Saint-Maclou. There he raises flowers, lupins of
course.
Leblanc himself served as a consultant on the staff of the Paris
Prefect of Police, and this shift reflected in his plots. Among the best novels are 813 (1910), in which Lupin is both a criminal and his pursuer. Accused of murder, he heads the police investigation to clear himself by finding the true killer of a diamond king. And a real policeman may be the murderer. In L'Aiguille creuse (1910) a bright lycée student manages to solve the riddle of Lupin and sees his treasure chamber. Lupin falls in love with a beautiful girl, promising to give up his life of crime, but she is shot by Holmes. L'Éclat d'obus (1916, The Woman of Mystery) and Le Triangle d'or (1917, The Golden Triangle) reflected the nationalist sentiments of the time: the Germans are portrayed as brutes. "During the half a day which they spent in Belgium, they saw the ruins of a little town that had been destroyed by the Germans, the bodies of eighty women who had been shot, old men hung up by their feet, stacks of murdered children. And they had to retire before those monsters!" (The Woman of Mystery by Maurice Leblanc, New York: Macaulay, 1916) La Comtesse de Cagliostro (1924) told about Lupin at the age of twenty, when his name was Raoul d'Andrèsy. He loves wine, beautiful women, and diamonds, but after meeting the intriguing Countess Cagliostro his life is changed. Arsène Lupin's adventures have been basis for several movies
and television series and he has featured in theatre productions. André
Brulé, who played Lupin on the stage beginning from Arsène Lupin (1908), continued in
the role until his death in 1953. Leblanc co-wrote this dramatization
with Francis de Croisset, a popular playwright. The play opened at le
Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris with great success. In Japan the
gentleman burglar has inspired a series about Lupin's grandson, Lupin
III. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre admired Arsène Lupin in his childhood, defining the rogue in his autobiography as "the Cyrano of the Underworld" due to his Herculean strength, his courage, and his typically French intelligence. (The Words by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated from the French by Bernard Frechtman, New York: George Braziller, 1964, p. 117) T.S. Eliot remarked of Lupin, "I used to read him, but I have now graduated to Inspector Maigret." ('Introduction: The Musical Sound of Breaking the Law' by Michael Sims, in Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief, introduction and notes by Michael Sims, New York: Penguin Books, 2007, pp. x-xi) For further reading: Dictionnaire de lupinologie: Arsène Lupin dans tous ses états by Paul Gayot & Jacques Baudou (2016); 'Arsène Lupin: Rewriting History' by Emma Bielecki, in Rewriting Wrongs: French Crime Fiction and the Palimpsest, edited by Angela Kimyongür and Amy Wigelsworth (2014); Arsène Lupin et Cie: les gentlemen cambrioleurs by Dorothée Henry (2012); Arsen Lupin: de A à Z by Philippe de Côme (2012); Dans les pas de Maurice Leblanc: promenades littéraires avec Arsène Lupin by Jacques Derouard (2010); Debussy's Mélisande: The Lives of Georgette Leblanc, Mary Garden and Maggie Teyte by Gillian Opstad (2009); Les repères d'Arsène Lupin by Gérard Morel; photographies Jean Hervoche (2008); 'Introduction: The Musical Sound of Breaking the Law' by Michael Sims, in Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief by Maurice Leblanc (2007); Maurice Leblanc, Arsène Lupin malgré lui by Jacques Derouard (2e éd. rev. et corr., 2001); 'Leblanc, Maurice (Marie Èmile)' by Joanne Harack Hayne, in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, edited by John M. Reilly (1985); Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story by Howard Haycraft (1941) - Films: The Gentleman Burglar (1908) by Edwin S. Porter (remade in 1911 under the title Fate); Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock Holmes (1910-1911), starring Paul Otto; Arsène Lupin Ende (1911); Arsène Lupin (1916), starring Gerald Ames; Arsène Lupin (1917), starring Earle Williams; The Teeth of the Tiger (1919); 813 (1920); Arsène Lupin's Utolso Kalandja (1921) by Paul Fejos; Arsène Lupin (1932), dir. by Jack Conway, starring John Barrymore; Arsène Lupin détective (1937), dir. by Henri Diamant-Berger, starring Jules Berry; Arsène Lupin Returns (1938), dir. by George Fitzmaurice, starring Melvyn Douglas; Enter Arsène LupinLes aventures d'Arsène Lupin (1956), dir. by Jacques Becker, starring Robert Lamoureux; Signé: Arsène Lupin (1959), dir. by Yves Robert, starring Robert Lamoureux; Arsène Lupin contre Arsène Lupin (1962), dir. by Edouard Molinaro, starring Jean-Claude Brialy; Arsène Lupin (1970-71), French-Swedish television series; Rupan sansei: Kariosutoro no shiro (1979), dir. by Hayao Miyazaki; Arsène Lupin (1944), dir. by Ford Beebe, starring Charles Korvin; Arsène Lupin (2004), dir. by Jean-Paul Salomé, based on La Comtesse de Cagliostro; Lupin (2021-2023), starring Omar Sy, TV series inspired by the character Selected works:
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