in full Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
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, 1937.
Charles Leirens/Black Star