Maurice Leblanc

Maurice Leblanc (1864–1941) was a French novelist and short-story writer, born in Rouen. He abandoned a legal career and the family business for literature, and spent years writing psychological novels in the manner of Flaubert and Maupassant with little success. In 1905 the magazine publisher Pierre Lafitte asked him for a story about a criminal hero, and Arsène Lupin, the gentleman burglar, was the result. The character made Leblanc wealthy and he wrote about him for the rest of his life, in some twenty volumes including The Hollow Needle and 813. His sister Georgette Leblanc was a celebrated singer and for many years the companion of the playwright Maurice Maeterlinck.