1959: Les Tricheurs
Paris, Éditions Seghers, 255 pages. Novelization of Marcel Carné’s film starring Pascale Petit, Jacques Charier and Laurent Terzieff. The book was reissued by L’Inter in 1970.
1958: Fort des Femmes
Paris, le Livre contemporain. Of Françoise, Mac Orlan said : “Her style is so colorful that you have to read her books with sunglasses”. What would he have said of Les Bergères de l’Apocalypse prefigured by this book? Because it is indeed about a fight of women, arms in hand: a troop of poor immigrant…
1958: Chevrette et Virginie
Hachette, coll. Bibliothèque verte n°46, 253 pages. This first novel intended for young people is adorned with a cover whose reading could be much less innocent today than at the time. And it is the story of two adventurous and shipwrecked women that is told to us. We can even venture to think that Françoise…
1957: Les Amours de Roméo et Juliette
Paris, Édition Rombaldi, coll. Le club de la Femme. Here, a novel with Cyranesque accents, which is worth it for its detailed and colorful descriptions of Verona in the 15th century. Apart from that, it’s a book to support herself financially, written without passion. Living from her pen, without financial support, position or husband, may…
1957: Belle humeur ou la véridique histoire de Mandrin
Paris, Le livre contemporain – Amiot-Dumond, coll. Visages de l’aventure, 202 pages. The Ferme Générale (1680 – 1794) was a body of financiers and shareholders who, having bought the office from the King, collected the various taxes in force, with the right to keep half of them. Needless to say, the Farmers were overzealous, and…
1956 : La Vie passionnée d’Arthur Rimbaud
In this book, Françoise shows not only the poet, but above all the man Rimbaud in all the ups and downs of his life, with his vices, his eruptions of character. Rimbaud’s genius shines through, with his eruptive temperament, his absolute loyalty to himself, his mockery of all bourgeois morality, and his transformation from poet…
1955 : Jours de chaleurs
Paris, Éditions de Paris, coll. série blonde, 249 pages. Spain again. This sentimental novel hides under an apparent lightness memories of Françoise’s youth: the war in Spain, the Campaign in France. The novel’s heroine hides a secret, and a fiery soul not unlike that of the author. The secondary characters are probably drawn from a…
1955: Le Ministère des vains désirs
Nouvelles éditions Debresse, coll. série « de cape et d’Idée », Paris, 104 pages Note: Awaiting annotation.
1954: La Hollandaise volante
Broadcast by Radio-Lille. Probably lost, so we can only speculate on this Flying Dutchwoman. The Flying Dutchman is the archetype of ghost ships, prominently featured in the tales and legends passed down and still passed down to seafarers. It represents the fatal omen to not cross on one’s voyage, because it is a boat whose…