criminals
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Commemorative postage stamp for criminologist Edmond Locard. Engraving by Claude Andréotto. Communiqué de Presse, February 2016: La Poste. Dr. Edmond Locard is the most renowned French criminologist of twentieth century. He founded the police forensics laboratory in Lyon and was a prolific author of true crime books. In the nineteenth century, retired Paris Police Prefects…
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La Fille de Fantômas by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, vol. 8. Cover illustration by Gino Starace. Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1911 (1920s reprint). Author’s Collection. In the eighth Fantômas novel, Souvstre and Allain added a new core character to the series, Hélène, the “Daughter of Fantômas.” Born in South Africa and ignorant of her parentage,…
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Fantômas by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain. Anonymous Cover Illustration. Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1911. Author’s Collection. Fantômas burst upon the scene on February 10, 1911. The book’s cover portrays a man dressed in tuxedo, top hat, and ball mask looming over the Paris landscape, concealing a bloody knife behind his back. He stares impassively at…
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Cover of Le Mystère de la Chambre Jaune by Gaston Leroux. Paris: Pierre Lafitte, 1908. Criminocorpus.org: Bibliothèque des littératures policières, Paris. No one could explain it. Late at night, Mademoiselle Mathilde Stangerson had retired to the guest bedroom attached to her father’s pavilion laboratory, rather than return to the family chateau. At half-past midnight, the…
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Cover of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Cambrioleur (“Gentleman Burglar”). Éditions Pierre Lafitte, 1914 (reissue 1921). Illustration by Léo Fontan. Author’s Collection. By 1905, author Maurice Leblanc had hit upon hard times. Born in 1867 to a privileged bourgeois family from Rouen in Normandy, Maurice was well poised to become a literary celebrity. Acclaimed novelist Gustave Flaubert…
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“A Railway Drama: The Montmoreau Affair.” In Le Petit Journal, Supplément Illustré, Saturday, May 16, 1891. Author’s collection. From his prison cell, the celebrated “gentleman burglar” Arsène Lupin had been taunting Sûreté Inspector Ganimard for several weeks.[1] Charged with multiple counts of grand theft, Lupin declared he would not be attending his trial. When the…
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Sample portrait parlé (“talking portrait”) anthropometric identity card with Alphonse Bertillon’s self-portrait photo, May 14, 1891. Wikipedia Commons: Criminocorpus.org. While Émile Gaboriau enhanced the image of the Paris police by creating the upright fictional Sûreté Detective Monsieur Lecoq, Alphonse Bertillon set out to reform actual practices at the Paris Prefecture of Police. Applying statistics to…
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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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Ponson du Terrail, Les Drames de Paris: Rocambole, reissued in 157 weekly installments (Paris: Jules Rouff, 1883-1886). Cover by Kauffmann. Collection: Bibliothèque des Littératures Policières, Paris. Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail (1829-1871) was the most prolific and commercially successful popular novelist of nineteenth-century France. His enduring character is Rocambole, a criminal-turned-avenger hero whose exploits were…
Shady Detectives, Elegant Criminals & Dark Avengers 