The Detective's Dilemma. WITH The Detective's Triumph. By Emile Gaboriau ; Translated by Sir Gilbert Campbell. WITH: A Bayard from Bengal. By F. Anstey. LONDON : 1888, 1888, 1902.

Ward, Lock and Company & Methuen & Co, 1888. Not Given . Hardcover. Very Good Plus. 8vo. Frontispieces . LONDON : 1888, 1888, 1902. [ Undated; British Library gives the dates as such.]. Scarce: Detective fiction. Hardback. Bound volume of three sixpenny novels (would have been issued in paper covers). Double-column text. Hardback. At head of title-page : Monsieur Lecoq. Frontispieces to each Gaboriau novel. Contemporary grey cloth; gilt lettered spine. Bright tight and clean. Usual browning to paper. No owner name or internal markings. Minor wear only. VERY GOOD. 141, 200, 114 pages. Only 3 copies held in the UK. ÉMILE GABORIAU (9 November 1832 - 28 September 1873) was a French writer, novelist, journalist, and a pioneer of detective fiction. Gaboriau was born in the small town of Saujon, Charente-Maritime. He was the son of Charles Gabriel Gaboriau, a public official and his mother was Marguerite Stéphanie Gaboriau. Gaboriau became a secretary to Paul Féval, and after publishing some novels and miscellaneous writings, found his real gift in L'Affaire Lerouge (1866). Gaboriau's novel L'Affaire Lerouge is widely considered as the first detective story in France. Its structure is characterized as a flashback into the past that serves to inform a present mystery. Influenced by Baudelaire's translations of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, this work introduced an amateur detective and a young police officer named Monsieur Lecoq, who was the hero in three of Gaboriau's later detective novels. The character of Lecoq was based on a real-life thief turned police officer, Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857), whose own memoirs, Les Vrais Mémoires de Vidocq, mixed fiction and fact. It may also have been influenced by the villainous Monsieur Lecoq, one of the main protagonists of Féval's Les Habits Noirs book series. Gaboriau was likely influenced also by the philosophy of positivism, promoted by Auguste Comte, which promoted the idea that science could answer all questions. Gaboriau's investigators rely heavily on newly developing scientific methodologies in their pursuit of criminals rather than simply on interrogation and eyewitnesses. 8vo. **Will be well-packed for posting/shipping**. [ Rosley Books for Antiquarian books, CHS, Cumberland, Everyman, GKC, Inklings, Keswick, Literature, MacDonald, Rarities, Theology and History. ]. SCARCE.