Wednesday primary source #18 - True Crime!

POLICE-MAGAZINE. Paris. Complete run: No. 1 (Dec. 1, 1930) through No. 450 (1939); bound in annual volumes.

At the end of the summer, Stanford was fortunate to acquire a complete run of the French illustrated "true crime" magazine from the 1930s, Police-Magazine.

Police-Magazine was part of a genre whose most well-known titles were Détective (published by Gallimard during the same years), and the earlier Le Petit Parisien, and L’Illustration, the latter two focusing less on criminal sensationalism. We have microfilm runs of the latter two; this is now the only set of Police-Magazine in North America. This periodical, aimed at a working class audience, is heavily illustrated, and serves as a valuable addition to SULAIR’s holdings on the turbulent 1930s in France. In addition to the journals above, it complements holdings in graphic novels and comics, our collection of the French crime fiction series Masque, and other works of interwar French fiction, politics, and crime. Paging through, I was struck by the number of female authors. While many of the contributors are now forgotten, this magazine contained at least one early serialized story Georges Simenon, and also probably provided him with ample inspiration for his novels.

From the vendor's notes: "Police-Magazine reported on a mix of organized crime, political and social scandal, titillating sexual and romantic misdeeds, urban vices such as gambling and prostitution, daring thefts from the rich, and grand guignol acts of violence -- all enhanced with photos (frequently retouched to increase the shock value) and with sleazy illustrations. For much of the run, the photo editors also went out of their way to publish pictures of young and strikingly good-looking criminals of both sexes -- often with nothing more than a caption noting that the individual had committed some petty misdemeanor.
The mix of articles is weighted toward coverage of Paris and the Paris region, but also includes reports on crimes in other French cities and towns and in rural areas of France, as well as in other European countries, the United States and elsewhere."

New Acquisitions, Arrivals from August-September 2010

French 
Adams, Christine. Poverty, Charity, and Motherhood: Maternal Societies in Nineteenth-Century France. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 2010.

Ahearne, Jeremy. Intellectuals, Culture and Public Policy in France: Approaches from the Left. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010.

Azérad, Hugo, and Peter Collier. Twentieth-century French poetry: a critical anthology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Berbouche, Alain. Marine et justice: la justice criminelle de la Marine française sous l'Ancien Régime. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010.

Bourdin, Philippe. Les noblesses françaises dans l'Europe de la Révolution: actes du colloque international de Vizille (10-12 septembre 2008). Rennes [France]: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010.

Brown, Andrew. Brief Lives: Stendhal. London: Hesperus Press, 2010.

Castaing, Bernard. L'itinéraire spirituel d'un négociant bayonnais: le journal de Bernard Castaing, 1818-1842. Pau: Cairn, 2010.

Chafer, Tony, and Emmanuel Godin. The End of the French Exception?: Decline and Revival of the 'French Model'. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Chevallier, Fabienne. Le Paris moderne: histoire des politiques d'hygiène, 1855-1898. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010.

Denoyelle, Corinne. Poétique du dialogue médiéval. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010.

Gaffney, John. Political Leadership in France: From Charles De Gaulle to Nicholas Sarkozy. Basingstoke [England]: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Harris, Ruth. Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010.

Hiner, Susan. Accessories to Modernity: Fashion and the Feminine in Nineteenth-Century France. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.

Khadra, Yasmina. What the day owes the night. London: William Heinemann, 2010.

Kong, Katherine. Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2010.

Nord, Philip G. France's New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Primi, Alice. Femmes de progrès: françaises et allemandes engagées dans leur siècle 1848-1870. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010.

Schwarzfuchs, Simon. La politique napoléonienne envers les juifs dans l'empire. Paris: Champion, 2010.

Tuttle, Leslie. Conceiving the Old Regime: Pronatalism and the Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern France. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Wolin, Richard. The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Italian
Addante, Luca. Eretici e libertini nel Cinquecento italiano. Roma: Laterza, 2010.

Ansaldi, Saverio. Giordano Bruno: une philosophie de la métamorphose. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2010.

Arielli, Nir. Fascist Italy and the Middle East, 1933-40. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Belco, Victoria. War, Massacre, and Recovery in Central Italy, 1943-1948. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.

Capponi, Niccolò. An Unlikely Prince: The Life and the Times of Machiavelli. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010.

Di Nolfo, Ennio. La guerra fredda e l'Italia, 1941-1989. Firenze: Polistampa, 2010.

Magaletta, Giuseppe. Pier Paolo Pasolini: le opere, la musica, la cultura. Foggia: Diana Galiani, 2009.

Orlando, Ermanno. Sposarsi nel Medioevo: percorsi coniugali tra Venezia, mare e continente. Roma: Viella, 2010.

Pandimiglio, Leonida. Famiglia e memoria a Firenze. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2010.

Peterson, Thomas E. The revolt of the scribe in modern Italian literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.

Salsini, Laura A. Addressing the Letter: Italian Women Writers' Epistolary Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.

Santucci, Antonio A. Antonio Gramsci. Translated by Graziella Di Mauro, and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010.

Schwarz, Guri. Tu mi devi seppellir: riti funebri e culto nazionale alle origini della Repubblica. [Turin, Italy]: UTET libreria, 2010.

Terpstra, Nicholas. Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

Zinni, Maurizio. Fascisti di celluloide: la memoria del ventennio nel cinema italiano, 1945-2000. Venezia: Marsilio, 2010.