Colette

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Standard Name: Colette
Birth Name: Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Married Name: Sidonie-Gabrielle Gauthier-Villars
Married Name: Sidonie-Gabrielle de Jouvenel
Married Name: Sidonie-Gabrielle Goudeket
Pseudonym: Willy
Pseudonym: Colette
Pseudonym: Colette Willy
Colette , a Frenchwoman whose career began with the twentieth century, wrote nearly eighty volumes of fiction (often depicting lesbian or other scandalous sexuality), as well as journalism, memoirs (she is a great self-fashioner), and plays. Only a fraction is commented on here. Eight various collections of her letters have been printed, and many more remain unpublished. Her favourite topics are love, sensuality, and people's jockeying for power in relationships; she is a pioneer in the representation of female desire.
Castle, Terry. “Yes you, sweetheart”. London Review of Books, 16 Mar. 2000, pp. 3-8.
5
Black and white photograph of Colette wearing a man's suit (with cuffed jacket) and dress shoes. She is sittine turned in a chair so that her arm rests on its back, crossing her left leg over her right, and smoking a cigarette. She wear her hair in a curly bob.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Sappho
This inspired, among others, Amy Levy ,
Gubar, Susan. “Multiple personality”. Women’s Review of Books, Vol.
xviii
, No. 12, Sept. 2001, pp. 13-14.
13
Michael Field , Natalie Barney , Renée Vivien , and Colette .
Literary responses Michèle Roberts
MR thought the reviews of this first book wonderful,
qtd. in
Kenyon, Olga. Women Writers Talk. Interviews with 10 women writers. Lennard Publishing, 1989.
153
because [y]ou couldn't have asked for a richer range.
qtd. in
Kenyon, Olga. Women Writers Talk. Interviews with 10 women writers. Lennard Publishing, 1989.
160
That range, however, spanned male voices complaining of shrieking Lesbian banshees
Kenyon, Olga. Women Writers Talk. Interviews with 10 women writers. Lennard Publishing, 1989.
153
and a...
Literary responses Sylvia Townsend Warner
STW 's biographer Claire Harman terms this story extraordinarily delicate . . . at once both worldly and lyrical, reminiscent of Colette , whose writing Sylvia admired.
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1989.
62-3
Occupation Eva Figes
EF had a long stint as co-editor of this series, which includes works on Margaret Atwood , Jane Austen , Elizabeth Bowen , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Frances Burney , Willa Cather , Colette ,...
Occupation Natalie Clifford Barney
In a letter to Gertrude Stein written in December 1926, NCB explains: The other night . . . I realized how little the French femmes de lettres know of English and Americans and vice versa...
Performance of text Una Troubridge
The Stage Society produced UT 's theatrical version of Colette 's Chéri at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London.
Ormrod, Richard. Una Troubridge: The Friend of Radclyffe Hall. Carroll and Graf, 1985.
202
Cline, Sally. Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John. John Murray, 1997.
290
Reception Susan Hill
This novel won the Whitbread Literary Award for fiction for 1972.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
14
Critic Michele Murray called it a thoroughly created piece of work . . . wrought of language, built not from any personal experience,...
Textual Features Una Troubridge
UT wrote much of her 1914 diary in Italian. After 1915, her diaries document her relationship with Radclyffe Hall , touching on the two women's health, families, travels, and social activities. She also writes about...
Textual Production Eva Figes
EF wrote introductions to Maria Edgeworth 's Belinda and Patronage for the Pandora Press 's Mothers of the Novel series, both publiahed in 1986. She also contributed an article to Colette, 1991, a volume...
Textual Production Antonia White
AW 's thirty volumes of translation included especially works by Maupassant and Colette .
Textual Production Julia Kristeva
JK issued in three successive volumes what she calls a triptych: Le génie féminin: La Vie, la folie, les mots: Hannah Arendt , Melanie Klein , Colette.
Kristeva, Julia. “Is There a Feminine Genius?”. Critical Inquiry, Vol.
30
, No. 3, 1 Mar.–31 May 2004, pp. 493-04.
493 and n1
Textual Production Deborah Levy
DL has also written dramatic adaptations for BBC radio of others' work: of Chance Acquaintances by Colette , of Unless by Carol Shields , and of Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca , the last...
Textual Production Una Troubridge
UT collaborated again, working with Enid McLeod , on My Mother's House; and Sido, a translation in one volume of both Colette 's La maison de Claudine (a volume of autobiographical sketches) and her...
Textual Production Penelope Mortimer
Besides reviewing television, PM wrote both plays and screenplays for the small screen. She adapted for television both Colette 's Ripening Seed (a novel, translated into English by Roger Senhouse , about a teenage boy's...
Textual Production Una Troubridge
UT began translating from French by the summer of 1924, when she started working on Charles Pettit 's Le fils du grand eunuque (1920). In 1927, on her own, without a publisher's backing, she began...

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