One of the most popular characters in all of crime fiction, Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar long ago joined his (sometime) rival Sherlock Holmes in the criminal literature Hall of Fame.
Created in 1905 by French author Maurice Leblanc for the magazine Je sais tout, Lupin proved to be such a huge hit that the character would go on to inspire no less than 17 novels, thirty-nine novellas and a series of movie and television adaptations that remain enormously popular to this day.
Presented here is the original and unabridged manuscript published by Leblanc in 1905 introducing the world to…Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar!
About the author
Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941) was a French author whose greatest creation, the so-called ‘Gentleman Burglar’ Arsène Lupin, has inspired dozens of imitators as well as many film and television adaptations.Originally destined by his father to work in a card factory, Leblanc instead pursued a career in journalism and short-story writing, penning several successful novels and pieces of short fiction (as well as a failed play) before he was commissioned to create a detective story for the magazine Je sais tout in 1905.Leblanc, likely inspired by (among others) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, thus created Arsène Lupin and the character proved to be so wildly popular that Leblanc would go on to create 17 novels and thirty-nine novellas featuring the famed thief. When he introduced the character of Sherlock Holmes to his stories, Leblanc inadvertently angered Doyle, who believed his famous detective was being held up to ridicule and the character’s name was therefore changed to Herlock Sholmes, which did little to mollify Doyle.Also similar to his English counterpart, Leblanc grew tired of his most famous creation and even attempted to kill him off (as Doyle did to Holmes at Reichenbach Falls) but, also mirroring his literary godfather, Leblanc revived Lupin and continued to write stories about him for the rest of his career.Maurice Leblanc, after receiving the Légion d’Honneur, died of pneumonia in 1941 at the age of 77. Adaptations of the Lupin stories remain immensely popular to this day.
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