Gigi and The Cat

Colette is a kind of corsetiere of love. This most French of all French writers tells us how love sometimes binds and keeps a woman from breathing freely or how it may shape and support her and help her to be beautiful … One thinks of her as the female voice of Paris … It’s as if all the house fronts of Paris were cut away and we could see men and women talking, dressing, brooding, loving – Anatole Broyard * New York Times *
Everything that Colette touched became human… She was a complete sensualist; but she gave herself up to her senses with such delicacy of perception, with such exquisiteness of physical pain as well as physical ecstasy, that she ennobled sensualism almost to grandeur * The Times *
Sumptuous * Time *
A perfectionist in her every word * Spectator *
Her sensual prose style made her one of the great writers of twentieth-century France * New York Times *
The paradoxes of great literature are those of human nature, and Colette is nothing if not human … Accessible and elusive; greedy and austere; courageous and timid; subversive and complacent; scorchingly honest and sublimely mendacious; an inspired consoler and an existential pessimist—these are the qualities of the artist and the woman. It is time to rediscover them – Judith Thurman, biographer of Colette
She has been compared to a 20th-century female Montaigne, and it is true that her books offer a manual on how to live fearlessly and joyfully – greedily alive to every sensation and experience – Lisa Allardice * Guardian *
A perpetual feast to the reader. Her prose is rich, flawless, intricate, audacious and utterly beautiful – Raymond Mortimer

Colette

Colette, the celebrated creator of Claudine, Cheri, and Gigi, stands as one of France’s most outstanding writers. Her life was long, varied, and remarkably active. Born in Burgundy in 1873, she grew up in a household teeming with animals and children, receiving her early education at the local village school.

At twenty, Colette moved to Paris with her first husband, the infamous writer and critic Henry Gauthier-Villars, known as Willy. Willy coerced Colette into writing her debut novels, the Claudine series, by confining her to her room. He subsequently published these works under his own name, and they achieved immediate acclaim.

Colette separated from Willy in 1906 and embarked on a career in music halls as an actress and dancer. Her personal life was equally dynamic, marked by a significant relationship with Napoleon’s niece, two subsequent marriages, and the birth of children at ages forty and forty-seven.

Her literary output, encompassing novels, character sketches, essays, and extensive autobiographical writings, garnered admiration from literary giants such as Proust and Gide. Colette broke new ground as the first woman to serve as President of the Académie Goncourt. Upon her death at the age of 81, she was honored with a state funeral and laid to rest in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

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