48-495: The Crystal Stopper is a mystery novel by Maurice Leblanc featuring the adventures of the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin . The novel appeared in serial form in the French newspaper Le Journal from September to November 1912 and was subsequently released as a novel in a single volume. Leblanc was inspired by the infamous Panama scandals of 1892 and 1893. The novel borrows from Edgar Allan Poe 's short story " The Purloined Letter "
96-569: A "pockmarked young rascal wearing a white turban". According to his biographer Émile Faguet, his affair with Louise Colet was his only serious romantic relationship. Flaubert was a diligent worker and often complained in his letters to friends about the strenuous nature of his work. He was close to his niece, Caroline Commanville, and had a close friendship and correspondence with George Sand . He occasionally visited Parisian acquaintances, including Émile Zola , Alphonse Daudet , Ivan Turgenev , and Edmond and Jules de Goncourt . The 1870s were
144-499: A 1852 letter to Colet, he explained his reasons for not wanting children, saying he would "transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence". Flaubert was very open about his sexual activities with prostitutes in his travel writings. He suspected that a chancre on his penis was from a Maronite or a Turkish girl. He also engaged in intercourse with male prostitutes in Beirut and Egypt; in one of his letters, he describes
192-433: A crystal stopper. This article about a crime novel of the 1910s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . This article about a mystery novel of the 1910s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Further suggestions might be found on
240-449: A difficult time for Flaubert. Prussian soldiers occupied his house during the War of 1870 , and his mother died in 1872. After her death, he fell into financial difficulty due to business failures on the part of his niece's husband. Flaubert lived with venereal diseases most of his life. His health declined and he died at Croisset of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1880 at the age of 58. He was buried in
288-452: A great public success. Two years later, the book Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar was released, containing the first nine stories depicting the character that were published in the French magazine Je sais tout . By 1907, Doyle or his representatives had threatened legal action over the unauthorized use of the character, and Leblanc's following collection of stories was titled Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes . Maurice Leblanc received
336-638: A hater of all despotism, and one who celebrated every protest of the individual against power and monopolies. With his lifelong friend Maxime Du Camp , he traveled in Brittany in 1846. In 1849–50 he went on a long journey to the Middle East, visiting Greece and Egypt. In Beirut he contracted syphilis . He spent five weeks in Istanbul in 1850. He visited Carthage in 1858 to conduct research for his novel Salammbô . Flaubert did not marry or have children. In
384-515: A relationship with the poet Louise Colet ; his letters to her survived. After leaving Paris, he returned to Croisset, near the Seine , close to Rouen, and lived there for the rest of his life. He did however make occasional visits to Paris and England, where he apparently had a mistress. Politically, Flaubert described himself as a "romantic and liberal old dunce" ( vieille ganache romantique et libérale ), an "enraged liberal " ( libéral enragé ),
432-531: A series of short stories that was serialized in the magazine Je sais tout , starting in No. 6, dated 15 July 1905. Clearly created at editorial request, it is possible that Leblanc had also read Octave Mirbeau 's Les 21 jours d'un neurasthénique (1901), which features a gentleman thief named Arthur Lebeau, and he had seen Mirbeau's comedy Scrupules (1902), whose main character is a gentleman thief. By 1907, Leblanc had graduated to writing full-length Lupin novels, and
480-409: A son Claude Oulmann (1902-1994), who was subsequently authorized by decree to bear the name of Leblanc. Maurice had health problems and sank into a depression, which was compounded by Marguerite's divorce from her first husband taking time to go through the courts. Leblanc and Wormser did not marry until 31 January 1906. The "Association des Amis d'Arsène Lupin" (Association of Friends of Arsène Lupin)
528-489: A style that would pierce your idea like a dagger, and on which your thought would sail easily ahead over a smooth surface, like a skiff before a good tail wind." He famously said that "an author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere." This painstaking style of writing is also evident when one compares Flaubert's output over a lifetime to that of his peers (for example Balzac or Zola ). Flaubert published much less prolifically than
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#1732851046782576-407: A week in the completion of one page, never satisfied with what he had composed. In Flaubert's correspondence he intimates this, explaining correct prose did not flow out of him and that his style was achieved through work and revision. Flaubert said he wished to forge a style "that would be rhythmic as verse, precise as the language of the sciences, undulant, deep-voiced as a cello, tipped with flame:
624-444: Is a failure, causing him to give up the theater for a while. In 1901, he published L'Enthousiasme , an autobiographical novel. In 1905, Pierre Lafitte, the director of the monthly Je sais tout , commissioned a short story from Leblanc, that was to be in the vein of A.J Raffles by Ernest William Hornung and the adventures of Sherlock Holmes . The resulting "L'Arrestation d'Arsène Lupin" (The Arrest of Arsène Lupin) proved to be
672-401: Is almost too familiar to be visible. We hardly remark of good prose that it favors the telling and brilliant detail; that it privileges a high degree of visual noticing; that it maintains an unsentimental composure and knows how to withdraw, like a good valet, from superfluous commentary; that it judges good and bad neutrally; that it seeks out the truth, even at the cost of repelling us; and that
720-615: Is solely devoted to Flaubert's art, one can find lucid discussions in Vargas Llosa's Letters to a Young Novelist (published 2003). In a public lecture in May 1966 at the Kaufmann Art Gallery in New York, Marshall McLuhan claimed: "I derived all my knowledge of media from people like Flaubert and Rimbaud and Baudelaire ." On the occasion of Flaubert's 198th birthday (12 December 2019),
768-532: The Legion of Honor on January 17, 1908, presented by then Under-Secretary of State for Fine Arts, Étienne Dujardin-Beaumetz [ fr ] . While a supporter of French radical socialists and free-thinker in his early age, Leblanc became more bourgeois around the time of the First World War . Leblanc would start to grow weary of writing Arsène Lupin stories. As early as 1910, he tried to kill his hero in
816-672: The 1920s was an actor and star operatic soprano. During the Franco-German War of 1870 , his father sent Maurice to Scotland. Upon his return to France, he completed his studies in Rouen. The young Maurice received his first education in a free institution, the Patry pension. Then, from 1875 to 1882, completed his secondary studies at the Lycée Corneille. As a teenager, he frequently encountered Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant . Refusing
864-520: The 1930s. Leblanc also wrote two notable science fiction novels: Les Trois Yeux [ fr ] (1919), in which a scientist makes televisual contact with three-eyed Venusians , and Le Formidable Evènement (1920), in which an earthquake creates a new landmass between England and France. Leblanc was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for his services to literature, and died in Perpignan in 1941. He
912-517: The 20th century, including philosophers and sociologists such as Michel Foucault , Roland Barthes , Pierre Bourdieu , and Jean-Paul Sartre , the latter of whose partially psychoanalytic portrait of Flaubert in The Family Idiot was published in 1971. Georges Perec named Sentimental Education as one of his favourite novels. The Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa is another great admirer of Flaubert. Apart from Perpetual Orgy , which
960-778: The Saint-Martin cemetery in Perpignan in 1947, he was reburied on 14 October of the same year at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris, alongside his wife Marguerite and other members of his family (notably his step-brother René Renoult ). At the end of 1888, Maurice Leblanc decided to leave Rouen for Paris where he married, on 10 January 1889, Marie-Ernestine Flannel (1865-1941). They divorced in 1895. By Marie-Ernestine Flannel he fathered Louise Amélie Marie Leblanc (1889-1974). Maurice later fell in love with Marguerite Wormser (1865-1950) who already had
1008-469: The article's talk page . Maurice Leblanc Maurice Marie Émile Leblanc ( / l ə ˈ b l ɑː n / ; French: [ləblɑ̃] ; 11 December 1864 – 6 November 1941) was a French novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsène Lupin , often described as a French counterpart to Arthur Conan Doyle 's creation Sherlock Holmes . The first Arsène Lupin story appeared in
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#17328510467821056-555: The author's fingerprints on all this are paradoxically, traceable but not visible. You can find some of this in Defoe or Austen or Balzac , but not all of it until Flaubert. As a writer, other than a pure stylist, Flaubert was nearly equal parts romantic and realist . Hence, members of various schools, especially realists and formalists, have traced their origins to his work. The exactitude with which he adapts his expressions to his purpose can be seen in all parts of his work, especially in
1104-412: The career that his father intended for him at a card factory, Maurice instead headed to Paris in 1888, to pursue writing. First a journalist, then novelist and storyteller. His first novel, Une femme (A Woman), published in 1893 was very successful, and was followed by other works, such as Des couples (The Couples), Voici des ailes (Here are wings) and his only play, La pitié , released in 1902, which
1152-462: The charge of immorality, which was heard during the following year, but both were acquitted. When Madame Bovary appeared in book form, it met with a warm reception. In 1858, Flaubert travelled to Carthage to gather material for his next novel, Salammbô . The novel was completed in 1862 after four years of work. Drawing on his youth, Flaubert next wrote L'Éducation sentimentale ( Sentimental Education ), an effort that took seven years. This
1200-455: The end of the reading, his friends told him to throw the manuscript in the fire, suggesting instead that he focus on day-to-day life rather than fantastic subjects. In 1850, after returning from Egypt, Flaubert began work on Madame Bovary . The novel, which took five years to write, was serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1856. The government brought an action against the publisher and author on
1248-458: The family vault in the cemetery of Rouen. A monument to him by Henri Chapu was unveiled at the museum of Rouen. His first finished work was November , a novella, which was completed in 1842. In September 1849, Flaubert completed the first version of a novel, The Temptation of Saint Anthony . He read the novel aloud to Louis Bouilhet and Maxime Du Camp over the course of four days, not allowing them to interrupt or give any opinions. At
1296-435: The idea of hiding an object in plain sight. During a burglary at the home of Deputy Daubrecq a crime is committed and two accomplices of Arsène Lupin are arrested by the police. One is guilty of the crime, the other innocent but both will be sentenced to death. Lupin seeks to deliver the victim of a miscarriage of justice, but struggles against Deputy Daubrecq's ruthless blackmailer , who has an incriminating document hidden in
1344-451: The inexact, the abstract and the vaguely inapt expression, and scrupulously eschewed the cliché . In a letter to George Sand he said that he spent his time "trying to write harmonious sentences, avoiding assonances ". Flaubert believed in and pursued the principle of finding " le mot juste " ("the right word"), which he considered as the key means to achieve high quality in literary art. He worked in sullen solitude, sometimes occupying
1392-557: The main character 's persona is Arsène. During the game, the main character resides in the attic of Café Leblanc. Most recently, the main character of the Netflix series Lupin , released in January 2021, used Lupin as an inspiration for his own grand theft. Inspired by one of the Lupin books, he tries to avenge his father's wrongful accusation of stealing a necklace years earlier. He decides to steal
1440-473: The novel 813 , but would resuscitate the character in The Crystal Stopper . In 1918, Maurice Leblanc bought a half-timbered Anglo-Norman house in Étretat (which he would name Clos Lupin ), where he wrote 19 novels and 39 short stories. Faced with the imminent war with Nazi Germany , he left Clos Lupin in 1939 and took refuge in Perpignan , where he died of pneumonia in 1941. Disinterred from
1488-527: The obsessive project only to write the Three Tales in 1877. This book comprises three stories: Un Cœur simple ( A Simple Heart ), La Légende de Saint-Julien l'Hospitalier ( The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller ), and Hérodias ( Herodias ). After the publication of the stories, he spent the remainder of his life toiling on the unfinished Bouvard et Pécuchet , which was posthumously printed in 1881. It
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1536-459: The perfect expression. His Œuvres Complètes (8 vols., 1885) were printed from the original manuscripts, and included, besides the works mentioned already, the two plays Le Candidat and Le Château des cœurs . Another edition (10 vols.) appeared in 1873–85. Flaubert's correspondence with George Sand was published in 1884 with an introduction by Guy de Maupassant. He has been admired or written about by almost every major literary personality of
1584-521: The places mentioned in the intrigues of Leblanc in Normandy: Étretat and "the treasure of the kings of France", Tancarville , the underground passage of Jumièges leading to the medieval treasure of the abbeys, etc. The Japanese character Lupin III , first appearing in manga series Lupin III in 1967, was written as the grandson of Arsène Lupin. As this was done without permission from Leblanc's estate, this
1632-581: The portraits he draws of the figures in his principal romances. The degree to which Flaubert's fame has extended since his death presents "an interesting chapter of literary history in itself". He is also credited with spreading the popularity of the color Tuscany Cypress, a color often mentioned in his chef-d'œuvre Madame Bovary . Flaubert's lean and precise writing style has had a large influence on 20th-century writers such as Franz Kafka and J. M. Coetzee . As Vladimir Nabokov discussed in his famous lecture series: The greatest literary influence upon Kafka
1680-571: The reviews and sales were so good that Leblanc effectively dedicated the rest of his career to working on the Lupin stories. Like 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 also appeared to have resented Lupin's success. Several times he tried to create other characters, such as private eye Jim Barnett, but he eventually merged them with Lupin. He continued to pen Lupin tales well into
1728-675: The same necklace from the Louvre by mimicking the style of Arsène Lupin. Parts of the final episode of Part One were filmed in the town of Étretat . This location is significant because Maurice Leblanc lived in the commune. Some of the works were written at his residence there. The building is now the Clos Lupin Museum. Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert ( UK : / ˈ f l oʊ b ɛər / FLOH -bair , US : / f l oʊ ˈ b ɛər / floh- BAIR ; French: [ɡystav flobɛʁ] ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880)
1776-405: The way towards a slower and more introspective manner of writing. The publication of Madame Bovary in 1856 was followed by more scandal than admiration; it was not understood at first that this novel was the beginning of something new: the scrupulously truthful portraiture of life. Gradually, this aspect of his genius was accepted, and it began to crowd out all others. At the time of his death, he
1824-435: Was Flaubert's. Flaubert who loathed pretty-pretty prose would have applauded Kafka's attitude towards his tool. Kafka liked to draw his terms from the language of law and science, giving them a kind of ironic precision, with no intrusion of the author's private sentiments; this was exactly Flaubert's method through which he achieved a singular poetic effect. The legacy of his work habits can best be described, therefore, as paving
1872-502: Was a protégé of Flaubert. Flaubert was born in Rouen , in the Seine-Maritime department of Upper Normandy , in northern France. He was the second son of Anne Justine Caroline (née Fleuriot; 1793–1872) and Achille-Cléophas Flaubert (1784–1846), director and senior surgeon of the major hospital in Rouen. He began writing at an early age, as early as eight according to some sources. He
1920-622: Was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realism strives for formal perfection, so the presentation of reality tends to be neutral, emphasizing the values and importance of style as an objective method of presenting reality". He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary (1857), his Correspondence , and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics . The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant
1968-486: Was a grand satire on the futility of human knowledge and the ubiquity of mediocrity. He believed the work to be his masterpiece, though the posthumous version received lukewarm reviews. Flaubert was a prolific letter writer, and his letters have been collected in several publications. At the time of his death, he may have been working on a further historical novel, based on the Battle of Thermopylae . Flaubert famously avoided
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2016-491: Was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery . Georgette Leblanc was his sister. Maurice Leblanc was the second child of Émile Leblanc, 34-year-old ship-owner merchant, and of Mathilde Blanche (née Brohy) daughter of rich dyers, aged 21 and was delivered by Achille Flaubert, Gustave Flaubert 's brother. He had an elder sister Jehanne (born in 1863) and a younger sister Georgette Leblanc (born in 1869) who from 1883 until
2064-560: Was educated at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen, and did not leave until 1840, whereupon he went to Paris to study law . In Paris, he was an indifferent student and found the city distasteful. He made a few acquaintances, including Victor Hugo . Toward the end of 1840, he traveled in the Pyrenees and Corsica . In 1846, after an attack of epilepsy , he left Paris and abandoned the study of law. From 1846 to 1854, Flaubert had
2112-565: Was founded in 1985 by the philosopher François George [ fr ] . Its members are sometimes known as "lupinophiles". Leblanc's work inspired Gaston Leroux (creator of Rouletabille ) , as well as Souvestre and Allain (creators of Fantômas ). Arsène Lupin's exploits took place in the capital and in Pays de Caux , which Maurice Leblanc knew well. Being a collector of postcards, he had listed no less than four hundred manors between Le Havre , Rouen and Dieppe . The "lupinophiles" roam
2160-669: Was his last complete novel, published in the year 1869. The story focuses on the romantic life of a young man named Frédéric Moreau at the time of the French Revolution of 1848 and the founding of the Second French Empire. He wrote an unsuccessful drama, Le Candidat , and published a reworked version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony , portions of which had been published as early as 1857. He devoted much of his time to an ongoing project, Les Deux Cloportes ( The Two Woodlice ), which later became Bouvard et Pécuchet , breaking
2208-762: Was later the source of a lawsuit, though the copyright on Leblanc's work has since expired. When the anime version was broadcast in France, the character was renamed Edgar, le détective cambrioleur ("Edgar, the Burglar Detective"). The authors of various Lupin the Third properties sometimes draw on Leblanc's novels as inspiration; notably, the film The Castle of Cagliostro was loosely based on La Comtesse de Cagliostro ( The Countess of Cagliostro ). Leblanc and his gentleman-thief character are also referenced in Persona 5 , where
2256-516: Was the norm for his time and never got near the pace of a novel a year, as his peers often achieved during their peaks of activity. Walter Pater famously called Flaubert the "martyr of style". In the assessment of critic James Wood : Novelists should thank Flaubert the way poets thank spring; it all begins again with him. There really is a time before Flaubert and a time after him. Flaubert decisively established what most readers and writers think of as modern realist narration, and his influence
2304-515: Was widely regarded as the most influential French Realist. Under this aspect Flaubert exercised an extraordinary influence over Guy de Maupassant , Edmond de Goncourt , Alphonse Daudet , and Émile Zola . Even after the decline of the Realist school, Flaubert did not lose prestige in the literary community; he continues to appeal to other writers because of his deep commitment to aesthetic principles, his devotion to style, and his indefatigable pursuit of
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