colette

...............Encouraged to start a career as a writer Colette published in short period four CLAUDINE novels (1900-03) under her husband's pen name Willy. According to a famous story, he locked Colette in her room until she had written enough pages. The series of four novels depicted a teenage girl's improper adventures. The series became a huge success and inspired all kinds of side products - a musical stage play, Claudine uniform, Claudine soap, cigars, and perfume. However, Colette's own cosmetics shop went bankrupt. Tired of her husbands unfaithfulness she Colette broke free of him in 1905. After divorce in 1906 Colette became music-hall performer at such places as La Chatte Amoureuse and L'Oiseau de Nuit. On stage she bared one breast, which became the talk of the town. Once Colette mimed copulation in a sketch and caused a riot at the Moulin Rouge. She also had a protector, a woman known as 'Missy,' who was the niece of Napoleon III, the Marquise de Belboeuf, and managed her public image, as writer, as actress and as lesbian. Missy committed suicide in 1944 - living ruined and desperate. Among Colette's other friends and probably lovers were Natalie Clifford Barney, an American lesbian woman, and the Italian writer Gabriele d'Annunzzio. .............

colette dans francais

the nyt listing of the books of colette

the first book i read of hers was 'my mother's house and sido'. i fell in love with her there and then!

i love my past. i love my present. i'm not ashamed of what i've had, and i'm not sad because i have it no longer.
Colette, The Last of Cheri, 1926