Bøger af Colette

In My Mother's House and Sido, Colette plays fictional variations on the themes of childhood, family, and, above all, her mother. Vividly alive, fond of cities, music, theater, and books, Sido devoted herself to her village, Saint-Saveur; to her garden, with its inhabitants and its animals; and, especially, to her children, particularly her youngest, whom she called Minet-Chéri. Unlike Gigi and Chéri, which focus largely on sexual love and its repercussions, My Mother's House and Sido center on the compelling figure of a powerful, nurturing woman in late-nineteenth-century rural France, conveying the impact she had on her community and on her daughter-who grew up to be a great writer.

Colette began writing Break of Day in her early fifties, at Saint-Tropez on the Côte d'Azur, where she had bought a small house after the breakup of her second marriage. The novel's theme-the renunciation of love and the return to an independent existence supported and enriched by the beauty and peace of nature-grows out of Colette's own period of self-assessment in the middle of her life. A collection of subtle reflections about love and life, it is among her most thoughtful and stylistically bold works.

Two volumes of Colette's most beloved works, with a new Introduction by Judith Thurman.Perhaps Colette's best-known work, Gigi is the story of a young girl being raised in a household more concerned with success and money than with the desires of the heart. But Gigi is uninterested in the dishonest society life she observes all around her and remains exasperatingly Gigi. The tale of Gigi's success in spite of her anxious family is Colette at her liveliest and most entertaining. Written during the same period as Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, based on Colette's last years with her second husband, focuses on a contest of wills between Julie, an elegant woman of forty, and her ex-husband. Chance Acquaintances, a novella, involves an invalid wife, her philandering husband, and a music-hall dancer whose odd meeting at a French spa affects and indelibly marks each one of their lives.

Thirty-three years-old and recently divorced, Renée Néré has begun a new life on her own, supporting herself as a music-hall artist. Maxime, a rich and idle bachelor, intrudes on her independent existence and offers his love and the comforts of marriage. A provincial tour puts distance between them and enables Renée, in a moving series of leters and meditations, to resolve alone the struggle between her need to be loved and her need to have a life and work of her own.

Colette herself considered "The Pure and the Impure" her best book, "the nearest I shall ever come to writing an autobiography." This guided tour of the erotic netherworld with which Colette was so intimately acquainted begins in the darkness and languor of a fashionable opium den. It continues as a series of unforgettable encounters with men and, especially, women whose lives have been improbably and yet permanently transfigured by the strange power of desire. Lucid and lyrical, "The Pure and the Impure" stands out as one of modern literature's subtlest reckonings not only with the varieties of sexual experience, but with the always unlikely nature of love.

The Collected Stories of Colette beings together in one volume for the first time in any language the comprehensive collection of short stories by the novelist known worldwide as Colette, and now acknowledged, with Proust, as the most original French narrative writer of the first half of our century. of the one hundred stories gathered here, thirty-one appear for the first time in English and another twenty-nine have been newly translated for this volume.

La collection « Connaître une ¿uvre » vous offre la possibilité de tout savoir de La Vagabonde de Colette grâce à une fiche de lecture aussi complète que détaillée. La rédaction, claire et accessible, a été confiée à un spécialiste universitaire. Cette fiche de lecture répond à une charte qualité mise en place par une équipe d¿enseignants. Ce livre contient la biographie de Colette, la présentation du roman, le résumé détaillé (chapitre par chapitre), les raisons du succès, les thèmes principaux et l¿étude du mouvement littéraire de l¿auteur.

La collection « Connaître une oeuvre » vous offre la possibilité de tout savoir de Chéri de Colette grâce à une fiche de lecture aussi complète que détaillée. La rédaction, claire et accessible, a été confiée à un spécialiste universitaire. Cette fiche de lecture répond à une charte qualité mise en place par une équipe d¿enseignants. Ce livre contient la biographie de Colette, la présentation de Chéri, le résumé détaillé (chapitre par chapitre), les raisons du succès, les thèmes principaux et l¿étude du mouvement littéraire de l¿auteur.

The stories that inspired the film Colette, directed by Wash Westmoreland and starring Keira Knightley.Colette, prodded by her first husband, Willy, began her writing career with Claudine at School, which catapulted the young author into instant, sensational success. Among the most autobiographical of Colette's works, these four novels are dominated by the child-woman Claudine, whose strength, humor, and zest for living make her seem almost a symbol for the life force.Janet Flanner described these books as "amazing writing on the almost girlish search for the absolute of happiness in physical love . . . recorded by a literary brain always wide awake on the pillow."