French Canadian Paperbacks - Part VI - Arsene Lupin

Here are three more books with the gentleman thief Arsene Lupin published by Montreal's les Editions Varietes. All were published in 1944.

Les confidences d'Arsene Lupin

L'Agence Barnett & Cie.

Victor, de la brigade mondaine

French Canadian Paperbacks - Part III Arsene Lupin

In parts I and II I've shown three books from a series published in Montreal in 1944 and 1945. Here are three more, all by Maurice Leblanc and starring Arsene Lupin.

The first Lupin story, L'arrestation D'Arsene Lupin (The Arrest of Arsene Lupin), was published in the French magazine Je sais tout in 1905. It and 12 others from three of the five collections of Lupin stories are available in a recent Penguin edition (Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief, ed. Michael Sims) that I highly recommend. The story and eight others were collected in the first Lupin book, Arsene Lupin gentleman cambrioleur (Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar). The edition below was published in 1945 by Montreal's Les Editions Varietes. Also below are two Lupin novels from the same series.

One of the stories in that first collection is Herlock Sholmes arrive trop tard (Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late). The name is correct - Doyle (or his agents) were not happy with Sherlock showing up in this series, hence the subtle disguise. This is in the Penguin edition.

The second collection of Lupin stories was published in 1908 - Arsene Lupin contre Herlock Sholmes. It was published in England in 1909 as Arsene Lupin versus Holmlock Shears (yes - name changed again by the translator) and in America in 1910 as The Blonde Lady: Being a Record of the Duel of Wits Between Arsene Lupin and the English Detective. Also published by the obscure Atomic Books of New York. The last of Atomic's four books, Sherlock Holmes versus Arsene Lupin: The Case of the Golden Blonde, was published in 1946 as a paperback digest. The story is "adapted by JB". The book looks like a novel with no chapters and no sense that it is a collection of stories.

Arsene Lupin gentleman cambrioleur (Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar) - published 1907

813 - published 1910

La barre-y-va - published 1931

French Canadian Paperbacks - Part II Arsene Lupin

An earlier post described the Le Point d'Interrogation series from the Montreal publisher Les Editions Varietes. Twenty-three of the 28 books in the series were by Maurice Leblanc, creator of Arsene Lupin, the Gentleman-Burglar (title of the first collection of stories).

Here is one of his non-Lupin novels - Les Trois Yeux (The Three Eyes), published in October 1944. The book is digest sized, 192 pages and printed on high acid paper. Originally published in 1919 the story involves contact with three-eyed Venusians.

This edition is an exact reprint of a French digest published by Editions Pierre Lafitte in 1935, number 40 in a similarly named series. The cover is slightly modified with the price removed. There is no artist named on the Montreal edition. It looks like the same art but looking closely it appears to be a redrawn version of the French edition - artist Reschovsky (?).

Les Editions Varietes

Editions Pierre Lafitte

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