“Colette in full Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette: (1873-1954) French writer. Her first four Claudine novels (1900-03), the reminiscences of a libertine ingenue, were published by her first husband, an important critic, under his pen name, Willy. She later worked as a music hall performer. Among her later works are Cheri (1920), My Mother’s House (1922), The Ripening Seed (1923), The Last of Cheri (1926), Sido (1930), and Gigi (1944; musical film, 1958), a comedy about a girl raised to be a courtesan. Her novels of the pleasures and pains of love are remarkable for their exact evocation of sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and colors. She collaborated with Maurice Ravel on the opera L’enfant et les sortileges (1925). In her highly eventful life, she freely flouted convention and repeatedly scandalized the French public, but by her late years she had become a national icon.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Mark's Text Terminal 