Profile of Colette on Famous Like Me

Colette was the pen name of the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (January 28, 1873 – August 3, 1954).

She was born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, in the Burgundy Region of France, the daughter of Jules-Joseph Colette and Adele Eugenie Sidonie Landoy ('Sido'). In 1893 she married Henri Gauthier-Villars, who was 15 years her senior. Her first books, the Claudine series, were published under the pen name of her husband, 'Willy'.

She divorced the unfaithful Gauthier-Villars in 1906 and took up work in the music halls of Paris, under the wing of the Marquise de Belboeuf, known as Missy, with whom Colette was also romantically involved. Colette married Henri de Jouvenel, the editor of Le Matin newspaper, in 1912. The couple had one daughter, Colette de Jouvenel, known to the family as Bel-Gazou. Colette de Jouvenel later stated that her mother did not want a child and left her daughter in the care of an English nanny, only rarely coming to visit her.

In 1914 during World War I, she was approached to write a ballet for the Opéra de Paris which she outlined under the title "Divertissements pour ma fille". After Colette herself chose Maurice Ravel to write the music, he reimagined the work as an opera to which Colette agreed. She completed the finished libretto to L'Enfant et les sortilèges which Ravel received in 1918 and was first performed March 21, 1925.

Post-war, her writing career bloomed following the publication of Chéri (1920). She published around fifty novels in total, many with autobiographical elements. Her themes can be roughly divided into idyllic natural tales or dark struggles in relationships and love. All her novels were marked by clever observation and dialogue with an intimate, explicit style.

Her most popular novel, Gigi, was made into a Broadway play as well as a highly successful Hollywood motion picture with the title Gigi starring Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, and Leslie Caron.

She divorced Henri de Jouvenel in 1924 after a much talked about affair with her stepson, Bertrand de Jouvenel. She married Maurice Goudeket in 1935, making her full name Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette Gauthier-Villars de Jouvanel Goudeket.

A provocative figure throughout her life, Colette engaged in lesbian affairs while she was between husbands, and collaborated with the Vichy regime during World War II. During World War I she was a freelance journalist and converted her home into a hospital.

She was a member of the Belgian Royal Academy (1935), president of the Académie Goncourt (1945) (and the first woman to be admitted into it), and a Chevalier (1920) and a Grand Officier (1953) of the Légion d'honneur.

When she died in Paris on August 3, 1954, she was given a state funeral, although she was refused Roman Catholic rites because of her lifestyle. Colette is interred in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France.

Her works include:

• Claudine à l'école (1900)
• Claudine à Paris (1901)
• Claudine en ménage (1902)
• Claudine s'en va (1903)
• Dialogues de Bêtes (1904)
• La Vagabonde (1910)
• L'Envers du music hall (1913)
• La Paix Chez les Bêtes (1916)
• L'Enfant et les sortilèges (1917, Ravel opera libretto)
• Mitsou (1919)
• Chéri (1920)
• La Maison de Claudine (1922)
• Le Blé en Herbe (1923)
• La Fin de Chéri (1926)
• La Naissance du Jour (1928)
• Sido (1929)
• Le Pur et L'Impur (1932)
• La Chatte (1933)
• Duo (1934)
• Le Képi (1943)
• Gigi (1945)
• L'Étoile Vesper (1947)
• Le Fanal Bleu (1949)

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