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Maurice LeblancMaurice Leblanc (1864-1941) was a French novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsne Lupin, often described as a French counterpart to Conan Doyle's creation Sherlock Holmes. Leblanc was born at Rouen in Normandy. After studying in several countries and dropping out of law school, he settled in Paris and began to write fiction, both short crime stories and longer novels; his novels, heavily influenced by writers like Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, were critically admired but met with little commercial success. Leblanc was largely considered little more than a writer of short stories for various French periodicals when the first Arsne Lupin story appeared in one of these publications in 1905. Clearly created under the influence of, and in reaction to, the wildly successful Sherlock Holmes stories of Conan-Doyle, the roguish and glamorous Lupin was a surprise success and Leblanc's fame and fortune beckoned. By 1907 he had graduated to writing full-length Lupin novels, and the reviews and sales were so good that Leblanc effectively dedicated the rest of his career to working on the Lupin stories. Unlike Conan Doyle, who often appeared embarrassed or hindered by the success of Sherlock Holmes and seemed to regard his success in the field of crime fiction as a detraction from his more "respectable" literary ambitions, Leblanc does not appear to have tired of writing Lupin adventures, and continued to do so well into the 1930s. He was awarded the Legion d'Honneur for his services to literature, and died in Perpignan in 1941. External links Leblanc, Maurice Leblanc, Maurice
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