Colette (redirected from Sidonie Gabrielle Colette)

Colette (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette) (sēdōnē` gäbrēĕl` kōlĕt`), 1873–1954, French novelist. Colette achieved popularity with numerous novels, characterized by sensitive observations—particularly of women—and an intimate, semiautobiographical style. Her early series of novels, published in collaboration with her first husband, Willy (pseud. of Henry Gauthier-Villars), include Claudine at School (1900, tr. 1930) and The Innocent Wife (1903, tr. 1934). Among many later novels written on her own are The Vagrant (1910, tr. 1912), Chéri (1920, tr. 1929), The Cat (1933, tr. 1936), and Gigi (1945). Divorced in 1906, Colette worked on the music-hall stage until 1914. Her marriage to Henri de Jouvenel also ended in divorce, but her last years were enriched by the companionship of her third husband, Maurice Goudeket. Colette was the first woman to head the Goncourt Academy and the second to become a grand officer of the French Legion of Honor.

Bibliography

See Earthly Paradise, a collection of autobiographical writings, ed. by R. Phelps (1966); M. Sarde, Colette: Free and Fettered (1980); E. M. Eisinger and M. McCarty, ed., Colette: The Woman, the Writer (1981); G. Dormann, Colette: A Passion for Life (1985); N. W. Jouve, Colette (1987); C. Francis and F. Gontier, Creating Colette (2 vol., 1999–2000); J. Thurman, Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette (1999).

---

Colette

 in full Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

Colette, 1937.

(credit: Charles Leirens/Black Star)

(born Jan. 28, 1873, Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, France—died Aug. 3, 1954, Paris) French writer. Her first four Claudine novels (1900–03), the reminiscences of a libertine ingenue, were published by her first husband, an important critic, under his pen name, Willy. After separating from him, she worked as a music-hall performer, a life she fictionalized in The Vagabond (1910). Among her mature works are Chéri (1920), My Mother's House (1922), The Ripening Seed (1923), The Last of Chéri (1926), Sido (1930), and Gigi (1944; musical film, 1958), a comedy about a girl reared to be a courtesan. Her novels of the pleasures and pains of love are remarkable for their exact evocation of sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and colours. In her highly eventful life, she freely flouted convention and repeatedly scandalized the French public, but by her late years she had become a national icon.

---

Colette

full name Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette. 1873--1954, French novelist; her works include Chéri (1920), Gigi (1944), and the series of Claudine books