Friday 12 February 2010

French Canadian Paperbacks - Part I Arsene Lupin

I mentioned in an earlier post that parallel with the English Canadian paperbacks of the 1940s and 1950s were French Canadian counterparts. Here are a couple of examples from a 26 volume trade paperback series published in Montreal by Les Editions Varietes in the mid 1940s. Most of the books are by Maurice Leblanc and star his gentleman thief and detective Arsene Lupin. The imprint "Le Point d'Interrogation" translates as "The Question Mark". The publisher's address, 1410 rue Stanley is just below McGill University.

The first book is L'Eclat d'obus, first published in 1916 and published in the US as The Woman of Mystery and England as The Bomb-Shell. This is a non-Lupin story. The second is La Femme aux deux sourires (1933) and published in the US as The Woman with Two Smiles and England as The Double Smile.

The first book has one of the more violent and colourful covers in the series.

Published by Les Editions Varietes 1945

Published by Les Editions Varietes 1944

back cover of La Femme aux deux sourires

No comments:

Post a Comment