Le Club Français du Livre (CFL), founded in 1946 by Stéphane Aubry and Jean‑Paul Lhopital, was one of the most important publishing initiatives in postwar France, introducing the American-style book club model to a French audience. Its first titles appeared in 1947, and the enterprise rapidly expanded, attracting a membership that reached into the hundreds of thousands by the 1950s. The CFL operated on a subscription basis – members received regular offers, and the books themselves were issued as exclusive club editions, unavailable through ordinary retail channels. This combination of direct marketing, controlled distribution and distinctive production proved highly effective and was widely imitated, helping to define the modern French book club.
The CFL combined ambition with breadth. Its catalogue ranged from canonical authors such as Voltaire, Denis Diderot and Prosper Mérimée to large-scale collected editions of Honoré de Balzac and William Shakespeare. Under art directors including Pierre Faucheux and Massin the CFL became a major force in redefining mid-twentieth-century French book aesthetics, integrating innovative typography and layout and binding styles.
Jacques Daniel joined the CFL in 1957, where he worked as an artistic director and layout designer until 1970. He contributed designs and illustrations for numerous editions, including this 1962 version of Pierre Louÿs’s Les aventures du Roi Pausole (The Adventures of King Pausole), set in the libertine realm of Tryphême where King Pausole rules with the support of his 366 wives and his wayward daughter, the fair Aline. The women in Tryphême are required to be naked at all times, a rule which does not apply to the monarch himself or the men of the country. Plus ça change. Daniel’s style for the white-on-black illustrations, à la pointe sèche sur grain d’argent (drypoints on a resin ground), is both original and witty, using loose but well-placed lines to suggest the chaotic topsy-turvy world of Tryphême.
It is fascinating, and telling, that this edition of Roi Pausole was the last of a dozen or so illustrated editions ever to be published. Though text-only versions are currently available, no artist since Daniel has attempted to produce a new illustrated version of this very visual tale. Why should that be? Is it because post-1960s the free-love anarchism of Tryphême that once seemed charmingly subversive started to read differently – the royal double standard, the mandatory nudity for young women, the harem?
It surely cannot be that double standards are no longer an issue – a sovereign who publicly preaches maximum liberty and minimum interference while privately maintaining arrangements that depend entirely on the inability of others to exercise those same freedoms. The harem only works because the 366 wives have no meaningful exit. Aline's nakedness is compulsory, not chosen. The Code of Tryphême is for everyone except the people the king is responsible for.
Louÿs, of course, presents all this as comedy, which is part of what makes it such a durable text – the satire is embedded so lightly that readers can choose whether to notice it or not. Illustrators up to the 1950s largely chose not to notice, giving us images of cheerfully untroubled nudity. A contemporary illustrator working on Roi Pausole now would almost certainly find it impossible to ignore, and that tension between the book's surface charm and its embedded critique might actually make for a far more interesting visual interpretation than anything the earlier editions achieved. It could even be the angle that makes a new illustrated edition viable, not despite the double standard but because of it.
Pierre Louÿs would surely be rather pleased that his fictional monarch's hypocrisy still resonates after 125 years. Pausole at least has the self-awareness to know he's being inconsistent; he just doesn't particularly care, which makes him more honest than most.
The Daniel-illustrated Les aventures du Roi Pausole was published by Le Club Français du Livre in a limited numbered edition of 8,500 copies.
