Creator of Paulus de Boskabouter dies
Jean Dulieu, the deviser of the Paulus de Boskabouter stories, has died at the age of 85 years. Jan van Oort – his real name – was a violinist in the Concertgebouw orchestra. During the last year of the war he was sitting at home unemployed and he began drawing. One of the figures that rolled out of his pen was a gnome with a bald head and round belly.
The stories he conceived around this gnome first appeared in the national daily newspaper Het Vrije Volk and later also in book form. The adaptations for radio and television made Paulus a celebrated figure among the various generations in the Netherlands.
However, he remained rather unknown abroad. So far as we know there were only two foreign translations of a Paulus adventure, Paulus and the Acornmen (The World Publishing Company, Cleveland, 1966) and Paulus and the Dragon (The Crossing Press, New York, 1978). Nowadays, his work is regarded by many experts as one of the classics of Dutch children’s literature.
