Jules de Grandin

Jules de Grandin
Drawing of a white haired man with a moustache facing right, holding a glass of wine in his left hand.
Jules de Grandin, picture by Virgil Finlay
First appearance Weird Tales
Created by Seabury Quinn
Information
Occupation Occult detective
Nationality French

Jules de Grandin is a fictional occult detective created by Seabury Quinn for Weird Tales. Assisted by Dr. Trowbridge (serving the same narrative purpose as Dr. Watson), de Grandin fought ghosts, werewolves, and satanists in over ninety stories, and one novel, between 1925 and 1951. Jules de Grandin and Dr. Trowbridge lived in Harrisonville, New Jersey. De Grandin was a French physician and expert on the occult and a former member of the French Sûreté who resembled a more physically dynamic blond, blue-eyed Hercule Poirot. Often, the supernatural entities in the mysteries are revealed not to be supernatural at all but the actions of insane, evil and depraved human beings.

Collected editions

In 1966 Mycroft & Moran published a ten-story, hardcover de Grandin collection, The Phantom Fighter. The collection included stories published between 1925 and 1930; Quinn provided an introductory essay.[1]

Beginning in 1976, Popular Library issued five paperback collections of de Grandin stories, assembled and edited by Robert Weinberg. The collections included about one-third of the series as well as the only full-length de Grandin novel, The Devil's Bride. The volumes carried covers by Vincent DiFate and included interior illustrations by Stephen Fabian. Aside from The Devil's Bride, originally serialized in 1932, only three of the stories included had been published after 1930.[2]

  • The Adventures of Jules de Grandin (August 1976)
  • The Casebook of Jules de Grandin (September 1976)
  • The Skeleton Closet of Jules de Grandin (October 1976)
  • The Devil's Bride (November 1976)
  • The Hellfire Files of Jules de Grandin (December 1976)
  • The Horror Chambers of Jules de Grandin (February 1977)

No further volumes in the series were released, though more were planned, and the initial volumes were never reprinted. Weinberg reprinted three more stories in some of his reprint fanzines.

A collection of six-stories in French translation, Les archives de Jules de Grandin, was issued by the Librairie des Champs-Elysées in 1979.[3]

The entire series of stories has been reprinted in a three volume set called The Complete Adventures of Jules de Grandin.

The Devil's Bride was issued in an Italian edition, Jules de Grandin: La Sposa del Diavolo, in 2015, translated by Nicola Lombardi and published by La Zona Morta. [4]

Weird Tales

de Grandin stories were often selected for the cover of Weird Tales. particularly when Margaret Brundage was the regular cover artist.

References

  1. ↑ ISFDB bibliography
  2. ↑ Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections
  3. ↑ ISFDB bibliography
  4. ↑ http://www.lazonamorta.it/lazonamorta2/?p=22214


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