Colette's France

A lavishly illustrated biography of the lively and often controversial life of Colette, the French writer, artist, and intellectual.

Colette's France is a beautifully illustrated biography of French writer Colette, a key figure in French radical, artistic, and intellectual life in the early twentieth century. Told through the locations in France where she lived, worked, and loved, her lively life story moves along through her many different relationships and homes—from Burgundy to Paris to Brittany to St. Tropez and more—revealing her deep and personal love of France and the natural world. Colette's life and writing spans a special time in French literary history, the renowned artistic period of Belle Epoque Paris. Her companions were the great French writers, artists, actors, and intellectuals, and her life plays out against a backdrop of great creativity and style, liberation and rebellion. Colette wrote about love and experienced love in the most independent, sometimes outrageous, sense—numerous lovers, several marriages, a lesbian affair, and an affair with her seventeen-year-old stepson. Told through the authoritative voice of Jane Gilmour and complemented by stunning, rarely seen photographs and illustrations, Colette's France brings Colette's story to life and evokes the style and fashion of the times.