Colette, the creator of Claudine, Cheri and Gigi, and one of France's outstanding writers, had a long, varied and active life. Born in Burgundy on 1873 she moved to Paris at the age of twenty with her husband the writer and critic Henry Gauthiers-Viller (Willy). Forcing Colette to write Willy published her novels in his name and the Claudine series became an instant success. In 1935 she married for the third time and lived with husband Maurice Goudeket until her death in 1954. Her writing runs to fifteen volumes, novels, portraits, essays, chroniques and a large body of autobiographical prose. She was the first woman President of the Academie Goncourt, and when she died she was given a state funeral and buried in Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
She has been compared to a 20th-century female Montaigne, and it is true that her books offer a manual on how to live fearlessly and joyfully – greedily alive to every sensation and experience * Guardian * This most French of all French writers . . . One thinks of her as the female voice of Paris . . . It's as if all the house fronts of Paris were cut away and we could see men and women talking, dressing, brooding, loving -- New York Times Everything that Colette touched became human -- The Times A perfectionist in her every word -- Spectator Her sensual prose style made her one of the great writers of twentieth-century France - -- New York Times Book Review