argot
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“E. Villiod, Détective.” Frontispiece photo-portrait in Comment on nous vole, comment on nous tue (“How They Rob Us, How They Kill Us”). Paris: Chez l’Auteur, 1905. Author’s collection. Without a doubt, the most enterprising French private detective of the Belle Époque was Eugène Villiod. From 1899 to the mid-1930s, Villiod operated a private detective agency…
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Le Jargon, ou le langage de l’Argot Réforme (Troyes: Girardon, 1660). Bibliothèque bleue chapbook cover. Gallica: Bibliothèque nationale de France. Two centuries before Paul Féval penned Les Habits Noirs, French readers were already taking delight in publications about argot slang and an imaginary criminal underworld. The foundational Bibliothèque bleue chapbook in this regard is Le…
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Dustjacket Cover of Vidocq: The Personal Memoirs of the First Great Detective, trans. Edwin Gile Rich (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1935). Author’s Collection. The primary value of Vidocq’s Mémoires lay in its formulation of the detective as a heroic character. As French historian Dominique Kalifa has convincingly shown, nineteenth-century published accounts of the Parisian bas-fonds…
Shady Detectives, Elegant Criminals & Dark Avengers 