After thirteen years of such apprenticeship, Colette became disillusioned and divorced him.Ĭritics agree that M.
Willy locked her in a room until she turned out something. Thus were born the Claudine novels, which made Willy wealthy and He liked what he read and, making a few changes, sent them off to an editor- under his own name. One day, interested in stories of her school life, he encouraged her to write them down. He was a popular writer of potboilers under the name of Willy, and was known to all of Paris as Sidonie was the type who shocked the neighbors by refusing to wear mourning clothes when her husband died and who read Corneille at mass.Ĭolette's village life ended at the age of 20, when the music critic, Henri Gauthier-Villars, swept her off her feet and took her to Paris as his wife. Wine glass for wine glass, as he stumped local cafes for votes.Ĭolette's mother, Sidonie, had the greater influence on the girl and taught her the importance of being a woman. When his daughter was 6 years old, he permitted her to try to match him, Her father, a retired Army officer, was a frustrated politician. 28, 1873, in the village of Saint-Sauver-en-Puisaye in Burgundy. Speaking of the frankness with which she wrote of love, licit and illicit, one critic observed that an Englishman might feel she had lowered love to the level of sensuality, whereas a true Frenchman would feel she had elevated sensuality to the levelįrance's leading woman writer was born on Jan. Sex was never forced to take a back seat in her writings, which were further embellished by a piquant style Her forte was in the delineation of women's problems of love and she lived as passionately as she wrote.
But her fifty-odd novels and scores of short stories were as popular with housewives, shop girls and laborers as they were with intellectuals.īut her writing was not intellectual. Her stature was recognized when she was elected the first woman president of the distinguished Goncourt Academy. Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette Gauthier-Villars de Jouvanel Goudeket is a name that would not attract attention except for its length, but the simple name, Colette, was one of the most famous in France.
3- Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, one of the most famous of modern French writers, died tonight at the age of 81 in her Paris apartment at the Palais Royal. Colette Is Dead in Paris at 81 Novelist Wrote 'Gigi' and 'Cheri'Ĭolette Is Dead in Paris at 81 Novelist Wrote 'Gigi' and 'Cheri' By THE NEW YORK TIMESĪRIS, Aug.
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