The Blonde Lady Being A Record Of The Duel Of Wits Between Ars Ne Lupin And The English Detective

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Blonde Lady" (Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsène Lupin and the English Detective) by Maurice Leblanc. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

In "The Blonde Lady, being a record of the duel of wits between Arsène Lupin and the English detective" - original title "Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmes" - the gentleman-burglar once more meets his enemy, the English detective Herlock Sholmes. If in the last story of "Arsène Lupin, gentleman-burglar" Sherlock Holmes arrives too late (the name was at a later date changed to Herlock Sholmes in reply to complaints and threats by Conan Doyle regarding copyrights), in the two stories that compose "The Blonde Lady" these two great intellects are bound in opposite directions. Where one chooses to abide to the law, the other uses his power and wits to crime - and who is going to win?These two stories appeared in chapters and as separate pieces in the magazine Je Sais Tout, during the years of 1906 and 1907, and were published together as a book first in 1908, being the second of the books where Arsène Lupin, the kind-hearted and humorous thief, is the main character. (Summary by Leni)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

"It is just when a thing gets beyond me that I suspect Arsène Lupin most" --from the bookSo confesses Chief-Inspector Ganimard, Lupin's implacable enemy in The Blonde Lady, the second of Maurice Leblanc's many books featuring Arsène Lupin. Published in the UK under the title Arsène Lupin versus Holmlock Shears, high-spirited aristocratic thief Arsène Lupin, outmaneuvers Chief-Inspector Ganimard and matches wits with the famous English detective Holmlock Shears and his indispensable sidekick Wilson (the obvious variation of the names of these characters were used to avoid copyright infringement concerns). This Warbler Classics edition relies upon the lively, faithful English translation by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, whose sparkling translation of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar so brilliantly introduced English language readers to Maurice Leblanc's irresistible creation. It also includes a newly revised translation of Leblanc's eulogy to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a biographical timeline of the writer's life and work.Lupin has been depicted in countless film and stage adaptions, and most recently inspired the Netflix series, Lupin, starring Omar Sy.

Maurice-Marie-Emile Leblanc (1864-1941) was a French novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsene Lupin, often described as a French counterpart to Conan Doyle's creation Sherlock Holmes. The first Arsene Lupin story appeared in a series of short stories serialized in the magazine Je Sais Tout, starting in No. 6, dated 15 July 1905. Clearly created, at editorial request, under the influence of, and in reaction to, the wildly successful Sherlock Holmes stories, the roguish and glamorous Lupin was a surprise success and Leblanc's fame and fortune beckoned. In total, Leblanc went on to write twenty-one Lupin novels or collections of short stories. The character of Lupin might have been based by Leblanc on French anarchist Marius Jacob, whose trial made headlines in March 1905; it is also possible that Leblanc had also read Octave Mirbeau's Les 21 Jours d'un Neurasthenique (1901), which features a gentleman thief named Arthur Lebeau. Leblanc also wrote two notable science fiction novels: Les Trois Yeux (1919) and Le Formidable Evenement (1920).

The inspiration behind the smash-hit Netflix series. Arsène Lupin is a fictional gentleman thief and master of disguise created in 1905 by French writer Maurice Leblanc and first introduced in a series of short stories serialized in the magazine Je sais tout. Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar (published in French as Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur) is the first collection of stories by Maurice Leblanc recounting the adventures of Arsène Lupin, released on 10 June 1907. Containing the first eight stories depicting the character, each was first published in the French magazine Je sais tout. The first story, The Arrest of Arsène Lupin, was published in the magazine on 15 July 1905. The seventh story in this collection features English detective Sherlock Holmes, changed in subsequent publications to "Herlock Sholmes" after protests from Arthur Conan Doyle's lawyers. This match of wits continues in the second collection of stories, Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes. However, the second work was actually a play subsequently novelized by the author along with Edgar Jepson, which appears here as the second work; and the Herlock Sholmes as the third work. In The Hollow Needle, Arsène Lupin is opposed by Isidore Beautrelet, a young but gifted amateur detective, who is still in high school but who is poised to give Arsène Lupin a big headache. In the Arsène Lupin universe, the Hollow Needle is the second secret of Marie Antoinette and Alessandro Cagliostro, the hidden fortune of the Kings of France, as revealed to Arsène Lupin by Josephine Balsamo in the novel The Countess of Cagliostro (1924). The Mystery of the Hollow Needle hides a secret that the Kings of France have been handing down since the time of Julius Caesar... and now Arsène Lupin has mastered it. The legendary needle contains the most fabulous treasure ever imagined, a collection of queens' dowries, pearls, rubies, sapphires and diamonds... the fortune of the kings of France. Lupin was featured in 17 novels and 39 novellas by Maurice Leblanc, with the novellas or short stories collected into book form for a total of 24 books. This omnibus collects the first four works including Arsène Lupin-Gentleman Burglar; Arsène Lupin Versus Herlock Sholmes; The Hollow Needle and bonus novel Arsène Lupin (from a play by leblanc novelized by Edgar Jepson).

Between 1887 and 1927, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote sixty Sherlock Holmes stories, and his great Canon has become the most praised, most studied, and best-known chapter in the history of detective fiction. Over twenty thousand publications pertaining to the Sherlock Holmes phenomenon are known to have been published, most of them historical and critical studies. In addition, however, almost since the first stories appeared, such was their uniqueness and extraordinary attraction that other authors began writing stories based on or derived from them. A new genre had appeared: pastiches; parodies; burlesques; and stories that attempted to copy or rival the great detective himself. As the field widened, there was hardly a year in the twentieth century in which new short stories or novels did not appear. Many hundreds are now known to have been published, some of them written by authors well-known for their work in other literary fields. The non-canonical Sherlock Holmes literature not only constitutes a literary field of considerable historical interest, but includes many stories that are both enjoyable and fascinating in their own right. Although a large bibliography on these stories exists, and a few limited anthologies have been published, no attempt has previously been made to collect them all and discuss them comprehensively. The Alternative Sherlock Holmes does so: it provides a new and valuable approach to the Sherlock Holmes literature, as well as making available many works that have for years remained forgotten. Presented as an entertaining narrative, of interest to both the aficionado and the scholar, it provides full bibliographic data on virtually all the known stories in the field.