Godfried Bomans

Godfried Bomans
Godfried Bomans in 1965
Born	Godfried Jan Arnold Bomans (1913-03-02)2 March 1913 The Hague, Netherlands
Died	22 December 1971(1971-12-22) (aged 58) Bloemendaal, Netherlands
Occupation	Writer
Language	Dutch
Alma mater	University of Amsterdam
Years active	1936–1971

Godfried Jan Arnold Bomans (2 March 1913 – 22 December 1971) was a popular Dutch author and television personality and a prominent Dutch catholic. Much of his work remains untranslated into English.

Godfried Bomans was born in The Hague and grew up in and around Haarlem, where his father had a law office.

Already as a pupil on high school Bomans showed literary interest; he became editor of school newspapers and published short stories, even in literary and student magazines.

He originally studied law at the University of Amsterdam (1933–1938; LL.B.) and then until 1942 psychology and philosophy at the University of Nijmegen, but spent his entire life writing.

In 1943 he quit his studies and moved back to Haarlem. There he helped save a number of Jews, for which he received the distinction Righteous Among the Nations. He is best known for his books of modern-day fairy tales and his short, humorous pieces full of wit, parody and mild irony. In 1950 he began an artist's club in Haarlem called Teisterbant, that became better known for its literary influences rather than other arts. He was friends with leading Haarlem artists and writers, and was "best man" for local artist Anton Heyboer in 1953. He was a widely read author in the 1950s and 1960s, but he is not mentioned in most histories of Dutch literature and did not receive a single literary prize. Nevertheless, a seven-volume edition of his collected Works was published between 1996 and 1999. His phantasy book Erik, or the Little Insect Book (1940), widely read during the German occupation of the Netherlands (1940–1945), was made into a film in 2004.

After the war, he became known in the Netherlands for his series on the hilarious adventures of Pa Pinkelman and Tante Pollewop, published in De Avonturen van Pa Pinkelman (1946) and Avonturen van Tante Pollewop (1948), both illustrated by Carol Voges. These were syndicalized in the then catholic newspaper de Volkskrant. For that paper he also wrote a unique two-column column on the front page on Saturdays, until a row with the then editor Jan van der Pluym in 1967, who wanted to break loose from the paper's catholic background, put an end to that.