Belot, Adolphe
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1829-1890) Guadeloupe-born French playwright and author of popular fiction, mostly melodramatic, and probably too "racy" to be publishable in English during his lifetime. He is known in translation only for the Miss Poles sequence comprising La Sultane parisienne (1877) and La Vénus Noire: Voyage Dans l'Afrique Central (1877; trans George D Cox as The Black Venus: A Tale of the Dark Continent 1881), both volumes having been translated earlier by H Mainwaring Dunstan as A Parisian Sultana (omni 1879 3vols). Miss Poles engages in various adventures searching for her lost husband in Africa, finding him at last in the hands of queen Walinda, the eponymous Black Venus-like She figure, who has made him her captive and lover. The Amazons she commands have gained various Superpowers through early training; this, accompanied by ruthless Eugenic culling of "inferior" children and dangerous males, give an ambivalently Utopian colouring to the Lost World they inhabit. [JC]
Louis Marc Adolphe Belot
born Pointe à Pitre, Guadeloupe: 6 November 1829
died Côte d'Azur, France: 17 December 1890
works
series
Miss Poles
- La Sultane parisienne (Paris: E Dentu, 1877) [published in three volumes: Miss Poles: binding unknown/]
- La Vénus Noire: Voyage Dans l'Afrique Central (Paris: E Dentu, 1877) [Miss Poles: binding unknown/]
- A Parisian Sultana (London: Remington and Company, 1879) [omni of the above two: published in three volumes: trans by H Mainwaring Dunstan of both titles: Miss Poles: hb/]
- The Black Venus: A Tale of the Dark Continent (New York: Peterson, 1881) [trans by George D Cox of La Vénus Noire above: date of this edition not firmly established: Miss Poles: hb/]
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