While Leblanc did not quite resort to, as Doyle did, to kill off Holmes and then bring him back, Leblanc bemoaned, “Lupin follows me everywhere. Conan Doyle made a determined effort to write other stories, like “Brigadier Gerard”, “Professor Challenger”, “Captain Sharkey”, etc., but history knows him as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. The history of Lupin has an uncanny similarity with that of Sherlock Holmes in the sense the character assumed a much larger than life role for the author. Lupin has also featured in several movies, television and theatre productions. As it featured Lupin as a gentleman-thief turned detective, Leblanc had also to face objections from a councillor in Paris with the same name. Leblanc was to go on to write 20 full-length novels featuring Arsene Lupin plus five authorised sequels.
They tested the attention span of the reader and gauged whether the reader wanted more and perhaps a full-length novel? The answer in the positive seemed to be a resounding success for both Conan Doyle and Leblanc. They served to fulfil another requirement. The publishing of short stories or as a part of a series was, of course, to popularise the magazine and increase its readership. The reaction of the reading public to the Lupin story in a collection of short stories was sensational.Ĭonan Doyle’s stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were also published first and serialised in the Strand Magazine though “A Study in Scarlet” was first published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887.
The story written at the editor’s request, was based loosely on Arthur Lebeau, a gentleman thief, the star of a French comedy of the time.
Nothing quite prepared the French novelist Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941) for the phenomenal success of his gentleman burglar, Arsene Lupin, when his first short story on Lupin was published in the literary magazine Je sais tout in 1905.
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