bibliotheque bleue
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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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Frontispiece portrait of Lacenaire by Levilly in Mémoires, révélations et poésies de Lacenaire écrits par lui-même, à la Conciergerie, 2 vols. (Paris: Chez les Marchands de Nouveautés, 1836). Gallica: Bibliothèque nationale de Paris. In the month before his execution in January 1836, convicted thief and murderer Pierre-François Lacenaire spent his final days in the Conciergerie
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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
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Jules Beaujoint (pseudonym), Cartouche, King of the Bandits, 25 issues (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1907). Author’s collection. Vidocq’s self-reference to the eighteenth-century bandit Cartouche in the preface to the Mémoires was on the mark. His narrative parallels the life and exploits of Cartouche: the child who first steals at home, runs away from his family, learns
Shady Detectives, Elegant Criminals & Dark Avengers 