Charlotte Amiot, being a librarian – or a conservator as they were called in the 19th century – is a reader. Her reading of Edgar Allan Poe is getting her into trouble – which she likes – in Fond of Enigmas. Charlotte stops by her favorite bouquiniste, and asks if there’s another volume of Baudelaire’s translations of Poe. He says no, she has to be patient.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Here’s a short list of Poe’s tales, other than The Murders in the Rue Morgue which she refers to in her first case.
Whereas Poe organized his tales into four groups, Baudelaire published only three volumes of translated texts. In 1856, he published Les Histoires extraordinaires, made up of thirteen texts, then the following year he produced the volume Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires, containing twenty-three translated tales, and in 1865 he concluded his work with the publication of ten translated tales Histoires grotesques et sérieuses. Baudelaire thus translated forty-six tales written by Poe together with The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (in a separate edition) which is far from the totality of Poe’s work. More than thirty tales remain untranslated by Baudelaire, that is to say, unknown to the French public in the nineteenth century. Charlotte has read the volume below, which includes Murders in the Rue Morgue.
Histories Extraordinaires, 1856 – included the following 13 tales.
Edgar Poe, sa vie et ses oeuvres —
Double assassinat de la rue Morgue — (Murders in the Rue Morgue, the story Charlotte refers to in this book.)
La lettre volée — Le scarabée d’or — Le canard au ballon —
Aventure sans pareille d’un certain Hans Pfaall — Manuscrit trouvé dans une bouteille — Une descente dans le maelstrom —
La vérité sur le cas de m. Valdemar — Révélation magnétique — Les souvenirs de m. Auguste Bedloe —
Morella — Ligeia –Metzengerstein —
Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses oeuvrages.
Émile Gaboriau
Gaboriau wrote detective novels featuring Monsieur Lecoq – a young policeman, who is employed by the French Sûreté. Lecoq is in his position after having been a criminal himself – much like Vidocq – who eventually became head of the Sûreté in real life. More about Vidocq below – in the book, Commissaire Bernard has read him as has Henri Remillard. Gaboriau was a journalist, and also wrote stories published in the Petite Journal, which Charlotte reads, and Henri belittles.
L’Affaire Lerouge or The Widow Lerouge 1866
Monsieur Lecoq – 2 vols., 1869 –
The Inquiry / Monsieur Lecoq / The Detective’s Dilemma) and
L’Honneur du nom – The Honor of the Name / The Detective’s Triumph
Patricia Keats 