Colette

Colette (French: [kɔ.lɛt]) (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954) was a French novelist nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Her best known work, the novella Gigi (1944), was the basis for the film and Lerner and Loewe stage production of the same name. She was also a mime, an actress and a journalist.

Life and career

Family and background

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was born on January 28, 1873, to war hero and tax collector Jules-Joseph Colette and his wife Adèle Eugénie Sidonie ("Sido"), nėe Landoy, in the village of Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in the departement of Yonne, Burgundy. The family was initially well off, but by the time she was of school age poor financial management had substantially reduced her father's income and she attended a public school from the ages of 6 to 17 — this was, nevertheless, a fairly extensive education for a girl of the period.

Early years, 1893 – 1912

In 1893 she married Henry Gauthier-Villars (1859 – 1931) or 'Willy', his nom-de-plume, a well-known author and publisher, and her first four novels — the four Claudine stories, Claudine à l'école (1900), Claudine à Paris (1901), Claudine en menage (1902), and Claudine s'en va (1903) — appeared under his name. They chart the coming of age of their heroine, Claudine, from an unconventional fifteen year old in a Burgundian village to the literary salons of turn-of-the-century Paris. (The four are published in English as Claudine at School, Claudine in Paris, Claudine Married, and Claudine and Annie). The story they tell is semi-autobiographical, but not entirely — most strikingly, Claudine, unlike Colette, is motherless.