Georges Simenon was a Belgian novelist, writing in the French language. He published nearly 500 different novels, and a large number of short stories. He became internationally famous for creating the French police detective Jules Maigret, as the protagonist in a celebrated series of mystery novels. Between 1931 and 1972, Simenon published 75 novels and 28 short stories about Maigret and his supporting cast. The Maigret stories have often been adapted into films, television series, and radio shows.
Simenon was born in 1903 in Liège, Belgium, to accountant Désiré Simenon and his wife Henriette Brüll. His father worked as an accountant for an insurance company. They were members of the wider Simenon family, a line of peasants from Limburg whose history had been recorded since the 1580s. Simenon's maternal ancestry was primarily German and Dutch. His mother was reputedly a distant descendant of the famed robber Gabriel Brühl (died in 1743). Simenon would later use the family name "Brühl" as one of his pen names.
In 1905, the Simenon family moved to the Outremeuse neighborhood of Liège, where Simenon would spend most of his childhood. In 1911, they moved to a larger house in the same neighborhood. The family started taking in lodgers to supplement their income. The young Simenon regularly interacted with these lodgers, who were apprentices and students of various nationalities. These interactions gave him his first taste of cosmopolitanism.
Simenon started attending the Collège Saint-Louis, a Jesuit high school, in September 1914. He dropped out of high school in June 1918, deciding against taking his year-end exams. He supported himself through a series of odd-jobs. In January 1919, the adolescent Simenon was hired as a journalist by the newspaper "Gazette de Liège". His assignments consisted of "human interest" stories, which were thought to be of trivial importance. Simenon grew interested in the seamier side of life in Liège, and started to frequent bars and cheap hotels in search of information. He also grew interested in police investigations, and attended lectures on police technique by the famed criminologist Edmond Locard (1877-1966).
Simenon wrote his first novel in June 1919, but it was not published in book form until 1921. During the early 1920s, Simenon started hanging out with members of "La Caque", a group of Bohemian artists. He was introduced by them to Régine "Tigy" Renchon, who became his girlfriend. In 1922, Simenon's father died. Simenon took the decision to move with Tigy to Paris, where he got acquainted with ordinary working-class Parisians. The city's bistros, cheap hotels, bars and restaurants would later become settings for his novels.
In 1928, Simenon took an extended sea voyage for a journalistic assignment. He discovered that he liked water travel. In 1929, he had a boat house constructed for himself and his wife, called the "Ostrogoth". They used it to travel through the French canal system. Joining them in their travels was their housekeeper Henriette "Boule" Liberge, who became Simenon's mistress. Their romantic relationship lasted for decades, unlike Simenon's previous short-lived affairs.
In 1930, Simenon wrote the first Maigret story during a boat trip in the Netherlands. It was published the following year. In 1932, Simenon's journalistic assignments caused him to travel across Africa, eastern Europe, Turkey, and the Soviet Union. In 1933, Simenon interviewed the exiled politician Leon Trotsky in Istanbul. Simenon took a trip around the world from 1934 to 1935. For much of the 1930s, Simenon was a permanent foreign resident in France.
During World War II, Simenon lived in Vendée, France. He maintained decent relationships with the German occupation authorities, and negotiated film rights of his books with German studios. Following the end of the war, Simenon was accused of being a German collaborator, but with little apparent evidence. In 1950, the French authorities temporarily forbid him to publish new works as punishment for his supposed collaboration, but the sentence was not enforced.
In 1945, Simenon left France with his wife for an extended stay in Quebec, Canada. He wrote three novels in the local city of Sainte-Marguerite-du-Lac-Masson. For the following decade, Simenon and his family moved constantly across Canada and the United States. He learned to speak English with relative ease, and so did his mistress Boule. In 194
