Colette was one of the most popular French novelists of the first half of the twentieth century. She is best-known for her novel Gigi, made into a popular Lerner and Loewe musical film and stage musical.
Using her pen name as simply 'Colette,' Sidonie Gabrielle Colette is remembered for her clear expressive feelings toward animals and flowers, and her poignant insights into human behavior, especially of women in love.
Early Life of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Born on January 28, 1873, in St.-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Burgundy, France, Sidonie Gabrielle Colette was the daughter of a tax collector, brought up and educated by Sido, her down-to-earth mother. When she was 20 years old, she married the novelist and music critic Henry Gauthier-Villars known as 'Monsieur Willy.' He took her to Paris and forced her to publish her work under his name. She did and the result was the successful Claudine series of four novels about a teenage girl's improper adventures.
Colette the Successful Novelist
Colette left her first husband when she was 31 (altogether, she was married three times.) She joined the music-hall theatre and started writing her own stories, which often drew heavily on her knowledge and understanding of animals and on her rural upbringing. Her best-known books are the two Chéri novels about a tragic love affair; Sido, based on her mother, which published when she was 56; and the most popular Gigi, which was published when she was 72. Gigi was made into a musical film set in Paris in 1958, with the same name, a collaboration of librettist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe.
Achievements and Legacy
Colette's novels are full of life and humour. Although she was a controversial figure throughout her life, she was honoured by French institutions for her achievements. She was a member of the Belgian Royal Academy (1935), president of the Académie Goncourt (1949), the first woman to be admitted into it in 1945, a Chevalier (1920) and a Grand Officier of the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour, 1953.) She died in August 3, 1954. She was refused a Roman Catholic rite because of her divorce, however, Colette was given a state funeral attended by thousands of mourners.
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is interred in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Major Books by Colette
- Claudine series, 1900-1903
- Creatures Great and Small, 1904
- The Vagabond, 1911
- L'enfant et les sortilèges (1917, Maurice Ravel opera libretto)
- Chéri, 1920
- The Ripening, 1923
- The Last of Chéri, 1926
- Sido, 1929
- The Cat, 1933
- Gigi, 1945
Sources:
Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002
Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994
Illustrated Biographical Dictionary, edited by John Clark, Chancellor Press, 1994
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