Jules de Grandin

Jules de Grandin is a fictional occult detective created by Seabury Quinn for Weird Tales.

Jules de Grandin
Jules de Grandin, picture by Virgil Finlay
First appearanceWeird Tales
Created bySeabury Quinn
In-universe information
OccupationOccult detective
NationalityFrench

He fought ghosts, werewolves, and satanists in over ninety stories, and one novel, between 1925 and 1951, assisted by Dr. Trowbridge (serving the same narrative purpose as Dr. Watson). 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 by Night Shade Books in a five volume set called The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin.[4] The individual volumes are

  • The Horror on the Links (covering stories from 1925 to 1928)
  • The Devil's Rosary (1929 & 1930)
  • The Dark Angel (1931 to July 1933, including the novel The Devil's Bride)
  • The Rival from the Grave (August 1933 to March 1938)
  • Black Moon (June 1938 through to the last story in September 1951).

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.[5]

Weird Tales

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

gollark: I'm making a brotlipython esolangs page.
gollark: My non-brpy one should, at least.
gollark: Ah yes, I see you have passed one testcase.
gollark: Hello! I am gollark.
gollark: I bet that name is taken.

References
  1. ISFDB bibliography
  2. Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections
  3. ISFDB bibliography
  4. "Series: The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin". www.isfdb.org. Retrieved 2019-11-14.
  5. http://www.lazonamorta.it/lazonamorta2/?p=22214
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