Colette

Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, 28 January 1873 to 3 August 1954) was a French novelist from Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in Burgundy, best known for the Claudine books, Chéri and Gigi.

She married the writer and publisher Henry Gauthier-Villars, known as Willy, in 1893, and her first four novels, the Claudine series beginning with Claudine à l'école (1900) and ending with Claudine s'en va (1903), appeared under his name. They separated in 1906 (the divorce became final in 1910), and she performed in French music halls until 1912, an experience that informed La Vagabonde (1910). Her major later fiction includes Chéri (1920), Le Blé en herbe (1923) and the novella Gigi (1944). She married Henry de Jouvenel in 1912 and Maurice Goudeket in 1935.

Honours accumulated late in her life. She was elected to the Belgian Royal Academy in 1935, joined the Académie Goncourt in the mid-1940s and became its president in 1949, and rose through the Légion d'honneur to Grand Officer in 1953. Claude Farrère nominated her for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. On her death she became the first French woman of letters to be given a state funeral.

For collectors

The four Claudine novels first appeared under Willy's name, and the first edition of Claudine à l'école names him as author. La Vagabonde was first published by Ollendorff in Paris in 1910. For English-language collectors, Gigi first appeared in translation in 1953, in Roger Senhouse's version alongside Antonia White's translation of The Cat (La Chatte), and Antonia White's translation of Claudine at School followed in 1957. Interest in Gigi was boosted by the 1951 Broadway adaptation starring Audrey Hepburn and the 1958 film, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.