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The Complete Claudine

Claudine at School; Claudine in Paris; Claudine Married; Claudine and Annie

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette; Introduction by Judith Thurman; Translated by Antonia White

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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ISBN10: 0374528039
ISBN13: 9780374528034

Trade Paperback

656 Pages

$28.00

CA$37.00

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Colette, prodded by her first husband, Willy, began her writing career with Claudine at School, which catapulted the young author into instant, sensational success. The Claudine books are among the most autobiographical of Colette's works, dominated as they are by the clearheaded child-woman Claudine, whose strength, humor, and zest for living make her seem almost a symbol for the life force. These books contain what Janet Flanner described as "amazing writing on the almost girlish search for the absolute of happiness in physical love, unique feminine inventories of the senses, recorded by a literary brain always wide awake on the pillow."

Reviews

Praise for The Complete Claudine

"The paradoxes of great literature are those of human nature, and Colette is nothing if not human . . . Accessible and elusive; greedy and austere; courageous and timid; subversive and complacent; scorchingly honest and sublimely mendacious; an inspired consoler and an existential pessimist—these are the qualities of the artist and the woman. It is time to rediscover them."—Judith Thurman, from the Introduction

"Delighted and quivering with life . . . Imbued with the most characteristic elements of the personality we have come to call simply Colette."—Robert Phelps, The New York Times

Reviews from Goodreads

About the author

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette; Introduction by Judith Thurman; Translated by Antonia White

Born in 1873 in France, Colette was the author of many acclaimed novels noted for their intimate style. Other Colette titles from FSG include Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances, The Vagabond, Chéri and The Last of Chéri, and The Complete Stories of Colette. She died in 1954.

Author Biography on Britannica