Chéri

I devoured Chéri at a gulp. What a wonderful subject and with what intelligence, mastery and understanding of the least-admitted secrets of the flesh – André Gide
Her writing is as sensuous and acute as it is unsentimental… Very beautiful and subtle… I feel more alive when I read her – Helen Simpson * Guardian *
One of the country’s most significant writers on sexual freedom … Since her death women’s personal narratives about sex have become a hallmark of French literature – Nelly Kaprièlian-Self * TLS *
A mistress of metaphor and sparking detail, with more punch than Proust – James Hopkin * The Guardian *

Colette

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was born in 1873 in a village in Burgundy, France. She would later recall her bucolic home and eccentric family in the semi-fictionalized Claudine’s House. At the age of twenty, she married the publisher and author ‘Willy’, who encouraged her to write her first four novels. The novels made her famous, but her husband, under whose name they had been published, retained her earnings.

Escaping her marriage, Colette became a performer in France’s music halls, an era of her life she would later describe in The Vagabond. She wrote her most famous works during the 1920s and 30s, including Cheri, depicting a relationship between an older woman and a young man, and Gigi, the story of a young girl in training to become a courtesan. Colette died in 1954.

Belinda Jack

Belinda Jack is the author of an acclaimed biography of George Sand and Beatrice’s Spell: The Enduring Legend of Beatrice Cenci.

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