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The Illustrators

To date, a single illustrator is known to us: André L’Archevêque (1923-2015), the son of Eugène L’Archevêque (the founder of Éditions du Bavard, the first publisher of dime novels in Quebec). As it happens, the first cover he produced was for a romance novel published in 1945 by Éditions du Bavard, Dans son cœur brisé by Jean Brétigny.[1] As the foremost illustrator of Éditions Police-Journal, L’Archevêque ended up creating one cover illustration per day. It is said that between 1947 and the mid-1950s, L’Archevêque created, for Éditions Police-Journal alone, around 5000 illustrations. As a freelancer, he initially earned $4 per illustration, but was soon making $10, $11, $ and $12.[2] He likewise produced the cover illustrations for the magazine Histoires vraies, also published by Éditions Police-Journal. The latter thus had the good fortune of being able to count on a prolific illustrator trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, as well as at the Sir George Williams School of Arts in Montreal.

 

What about the other publishing houses, those who were perhaps not financially solid enough to offer their illustrators a fair wage? The same questions involving the authors, in other words, also pertain to the artists. Did they use pseudonyms to separate their subsistence production from a so-called more legitimate body of work? Who were Lily, Nony D'or, Paul Hardy and Paul Hardi, Jack Buck or Ray?

 

[1] See André L’Archevêque’s interview with Jean Layette on September 30, 2008, by clicking here.

[2] Vincent Nadeau and Michel René, “Une littérature industrielle,” in Le Phénomène IXE-13, Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 1984, p. 47.

Contact Us

Are you interested in questions related to gender, fiction, emotions, racialization, consumption and stratification? Are you seeking to understand the social function of popular print materials?

 

Do you have information on the history of popular dime novels in Quebec that could advance research in this field?

 

You can reach us by contacting: Marie-Pier.Luneau@USherbrooke.ca

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