This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.
There are many spin-offs of Sherlock Holmes, and some excellent ones from the early 20th century are Jean Ray’s Harry Dickson, le Sherlock Holmes Americain. This series of pulp dime-novel’s originally started in Germany 1907 and continued until 1911. It underwent several different translations and versions and the one in the Santo Domingo Collection is one of the more interesting ones.
Hired to translate the originals, Jean Ray, a noted Flemish author, became tired of the stories and began writing new ones under the same series without signing them. These new stories mimic the length and illustration style of the originals but the stories tended to be more in the fantasy genre since Ray was a horror author. 
Widener has several more of Jean Ray’s works which can be found here: Le grand nocturne : Les cercles de l’épouvante, Les derniers contes de Canterbury, and Œuvres complètes.
Two volumes of Harry Dickson’s adventures can be requested from Widener: Ray, Jean, 1887-1964, author. La maison des hallucinations. Paris : Messageries Hachette and Une fumerie d’opium parisienne. Amsterdam : Roman-Boek-en-Kunsthandel.
Thanks to Emma Clement, Santo Domingo Library Assistant, for contributing this post.
We have most (if not all) of these at my parent’s house, along with ‘Malpertuis’. Jean Ray was a Belgian author, though.