Colette

Colette, pen name of Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette (1873-1954), French novelist, whose works probed deeply into the life of the senses and into human, particularly physical, relationships.

Colette was born on January 28, 1873, in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Burgundy. In 1893 she married the first of her three husbands, the writer Henri Gauthier-Villars, and moved with him to Paris. Although she and her husband collaborated on the four novels of the Claudine series (1900-1903), using his pen name (Willy), these frank semiautobiographical stories were largely the work of Colette. Divorced in 1906, she spent a few years satisfying her theatrical ambitions by appearing on the music-hall stage. This experience provided the background for La Vagabonde (1910; The Vagrant, 1912). Then, writing under the name Colette, she established her reputation as the leading woman novelist of France with the publication of Chéri (1920; trans. 1929), the bitter-sweet story of an older woman's love affair with a selfish boy. La Fin de Chéri (1926; trans. 1932), The Other One (1929; trans. 1931), and Gigi (1945; trans. 1952) are other highly praised novels by Colette. In books of reminiscences, including Sido (1929; trans. 1953), about her mother, and Apprenticeship (1936; trans. 1953), about her first husband, she frequently explores her love of nature and domestic animals.

Colette was also a journalist, critic, and playwright. Her own works, strong in characterization and dramatic in situation, have frequently been adapted for the stage and screen. In 1945 she became the first woman elected to the Académie Goncourt. Colette died in Paris on August 3, 1954.