Collected Stories of Colette

by Colette, Matthew Ward (Translator), Robert Phelps (Editor), Antonia White (Translator)

Overview

The Collected Stories of Colette beings together in one volume for the first time in any language the comprehensive collection of short stories by the novelist known worldwide as Colette, and now acknowledged, with Proust, as the most original French narrative writer of the first half of our century. of the one hundred stories gathered here, thirty-one appear for the first time in English and another twenty-nine have been newly translated for this volume.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374518653
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/01/1984
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	624
Sales rank:	1,104,633
Product dimensions:	6.15(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.70(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

Introduction by Robert Phelps
A Note on the Text
Translator's Acknowledgments

PART I: Early Stories

CLOUK/CHÉRI
The Other Table
The Screen
Clouk Alone
Clouk's Fling
Chéri
The Return
The Pearls

DIALOGUES FOR ONE VOICE
Literature
My Goddaughter
A Hairdresser
A Masseuse
My Corset Maker
The Saleswoman
An Interview

MY FRIEND VALENTINE
A Letter
The Sémiramis Bar
"If I had a Daughter . . ."
Rites
Newly Shorn
Grape Harvest
In the Boudoir
The "Master"
Morning Glories
What Must We Look Like?
The Cure
Sleepless Nights
Gray Days
The Last Fire
A Fable: The Tendrils of the Vine

PART II: Backstage at the Music Hall

ON TOUR
The Halt
Arrival and Rehearsal
A Bad Morning
The Circus Horse
The Workroom
Matinee
The Starveling
Love
The Hard Worker
After Midnight
"Lola"
Moments of Stress
Journey's End
"The Strike, Oh, Lord, the Strike!"

Bastienne's Child

CHEAP-JACKS
The Accompanist
The Cashier
Nostalgia
Clever Dogs
The Child Prodigy

The Misfit

FROM THE FRONT
"La Fenice"
"Gitanette "

The Victim
The Tenor
The Quick-Change Artist
Florie
Gribiche

PART III: Varieties of Human Nature

The Hidden Woman
Dawn
One Evening
The Hand
A Dead End
The Fox
The Judge
The Omelette
The Other Wife
Monsieur Maurice
The Burglar
The Advice
The Murderer
The Portrait
The Landscape
The Half-Crazy
Secrets
"Châ"
The Bracelet
The Find
Mirror Games
Habit
Alix's Refusal
The Seamstress
The Watchman
The Hollow Nut
The Patriarch
The Sick Child
The Rainy Moon
Green Sealing Wax

PART IV: Love

In the Flower of Age
The Rivals
The Respite
The Bitch
The Tender Shoot
Bygone Spring
October
Armande
The Rendezvous
The Kepi
The Photographers Wife
Bella-Vista
April

Editorial Reviews

Colette is a kind of corsetiere of love. This most French of all French writers tells us how love sometimes binds and keeps a woman from breathing freely or how it may shape and support her and help her to be beautiful . . . 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.” —Anatole Broyard, The New York Times

“This large collection of her stories allows us to share her exhilaration and to sample the pleasure of her prose . . . no other woman seems to have had as much lived experience to draw upon or as much sexual sophistication . . . The voice of worldly feminine wisdom runs through her stories.” —Phyllis Rose, The New York Times Book Review

“Like a table spread with the fruit and wine she celebrated in her books: 'Late-ripening cherries, rosy peaches, thin-skinned Marseilles figs, misty hot-house grapes and champagne shuddering in carafes of heavy crystal.' A sumptuous display.” —Patricia Blake, Time

From the Publisher