Jepson, Edgar

Leblanc was born in Rouen, Normandy, where he was educated at the Lycee Pierre Corneille. 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 Arsene Lupin story appeared in a series of short stories serialized in the maga...