Jef de Wulf really outdid himself here. This cover is from 1958 for René Roques’ romance novel La Fille de Monseigneur, and we think this is by far the best we’ve seen from de Wulf. The central balloon reads “love,” of course, and all the others have the two syllables making up the French word “rire,” or laugh, creating an image of heartlifting joy. Sublime stuff. Check out some of de Wulf’s other covers by clicking his keywords directly below.

Above, Drôle de salade written by Al Caussin, aka Alex Caussin de Perceval, Percy Wall, and Allan Blyth, published 1952 by France's Éditions de la Flamme d’Or, with awesome cover art from Jef de Wulf. Drôle de salade actually means “funny salad,” so you have to wonder what this book is about. In any case, what a bummer it’ll be for the main character when he finds out the term “French dressing” is already in use.

Above, a very cool Éditions de l’Arabesque cover for Dick Barnett’s, aka Georges Heil’s, 1967 thriller Nettoyage par le vide, volume 367 of the publisher’s long running Collection Espionnage. Nettoyage par le vide means “vacuum cleaning,” which we suppose is how they’ll scrape the ballerina off the pavement once she’s flattened by that sedan. She isn’t named Carrunova, by the way, but it’d be better if she were. The art is by Jef de Wulf, who apparently despised the ballet. See more of his work by clicking his keywords below. 

A couple of times we’ve shown you the distinctive work of French illustrator Jef de Wulf, and today we’re back with four more of his pieces in a slightly different vein. Rather than his usual textured backgrounds, here he works with negative white space while producing three covers for Editions de la pensée moderne’s 1950s-era Collection tropique, and one for Editions Armand Fleury’s Collection Le crépuscule. These, we think, showcase de Wulf at his best. We’ll have more later, and you can see those other covers here and here.

Interesting cover here from Jef de Wulf for the 1954 Georges Brass erotic novel Le plaisir est plus chaud dans l’ombre, aka, Pleasure Is Hotter in the Shade. De Wulf has a unique style, and we like his use of color, especially on this woman that registers to us as part sleepy-eyed temptress, part hungry spider in her lair. We’ll get back to de Wulf later. Today we’re focused on author Georges Brass, who was in actuality René Bonnefoy. Bonnefoy wrote as Brass, Roger Blondell, Roger Fairelle, Marcel Castilian, and published about fifty science fiction novels as B.R. Bruss. French pulp authors often wrote under pen names, so Bonnefoy’s collection of alter egos is hardly surprising. What is surprising is that the false identities were a matter of life and death.

Beginning in 1942, Bonnefoy served as Secretary-General for Information in France’s nazi-collaborating Vichy government, and after the war was forced to go into hiding. He was tried and sentenced to death in absentia, but still managed to write and publish under his pseudonyms, including his first and most famous sci-fi novel, 1946’s Et la planète sauta… (And the World Jumped…). He finally surrendered to authorities in 1955 during a period of amnesty designed to convince fugitive collaborators to comeforward. His death sentence was communted to d’indignite nationale, a form of shunning coupled with the loss of voting rights, exclusion from public office, and a ban from holding any management positions in corporations, banks, media, unions, and educational institutions. Sounds like a punishment that should be adopted in the U.S. for a lot of people, don’t you think?

Anyway, Bonnefoy became extremely prolific, publishing the bulk of his sci-fi novels within the next two decades, sometimes three or four a year, and if you visit French websites they tend consider his literary output with a surprising amount of objectivity. Later some of Bonnefoy’s personal writings from his fugitive years came to light, and in them he had outlined his defense should he ever stand trial for his wartime activities. Basically, he claimed that while he had held an important position, and in that role had overseen the censorship of countless publications, he never made any policy decisions. Pretty safe to say that defense would not have worked. René Bonnefot died in Paris in 1980, aged 84 years old. 

These covers for 1952’s Une âme perdue and 1953’s La passé de Khatmandou and La défaite des radars by prolific French author Jack Screen, aka Charles-Antoine Gonnet, were all illustrated by Jef de Wulf. De Wulf, who was born Joseph de Wulf, painted more than 500 covers during a career in Belgium and France that lasted forty years. You can see more of his art at a French blog dedicated to him here, and we'll have more from Gonnet/Screen later.