Last month marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, who assumed the mononym Colette after her second divorce. Married at 20, she was coerced by her first husband to write books under his name, as depicted in the 2018 biopic starring Keira Knightley and Dominic West. The Claudine series proved a sensation, rapturously relaying a young girl’s coming-of-age and her search for sexual freedom; the modern French teenager had arrived. Once separated, Colette immersed herself in “pleasures so lightly called physical”, and expressed them in her novellas with poetic intensity and a joyous savoir faire. Simone de Beauvoir called her “the only great woman writer in France”, but Colette also flourished as a dancer, screenwriter, librettist, journalist and the hands-on owner of a beauty chain. She loved women, married men three times, and, aged 40, gave birth to a daughter. She was awarded four ranks of the Légion d’honneur, became the first female president of the Académie Goncourt, and was the first woman to receive a state funeral in France upon her death in 1954. For those new to this astonishing author’s work, writer and Colette fan James Hopkin suggests some good places to start.
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