Claudine's House
Will be published approx. on 27. August 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
144 pages
978-0-241-57469-0 (ISBN)
Description
'I was an independent, stray dog who answered to no one...'
Claudine lives in a large house with a rose-filled garden and a vegetable patch smelling of tomato leaves and apricots. Beyond her house is the village, where travelling performers stop for the night and wedding feasts take place under a bright summer moon. Inside her house are Mama, who loves animals, and Papa, who lost his leg in the war, and a library full of forbidden and irresistible books...
Based on Colette's own early life, Claudine's House is a rich and enchanting depiction of childhood, animals, flowers, trees, books, families and love in late-nineteenth-century France.
Claudine lives in a large house with a rose-filled garden and a vegetable patch smelling of tomato leaves and apricots. Beyond her house is the village, where travelling performers stop for the night and wedding feasts take place under a bright summer moon. Inside her house are Mama, who loves animals, and Papa, who lost his leg in the war, and a library full of forbidden and irresistible books...
Based on Colette's own early life, Claudine's House is a rich and enchanting depiction of childhood, animals, flowers, trees, books, families and love in late-nineteenth-century France.
Reviews / Votes
Her sensual prose style made her one of the great writers of twentieth-century France * New York Times Book Review * Her prose is rich, flawless, intricate, audacious and utterly beautiful * Vogue * Brilliant, a novelist who prized the body over the mind... [her novels offer a] devastating portrait of beauty, seduction and the ravages of time -- Michael LaPointe * The New Yorker * France's foremost woman of letters ...[although] she did not invent the Modern French Woman in fiction, [she supplied] the organs, the accuracies, the mind and the heart * TIME *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
200 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-57469-0 (9780241574690)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
Colette (Author)
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was born in 1873 in a village in Burgundy, France, and 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; these included Cheri, depicting a relationship between an older woman and young man, and Gigi, the story of a young girl in training to become a courtesan. Colette died in 1954.
Belinda Jack (Translator)
Belinda Jack is the author of an acclaimed biography of George Sand and Beatrice's Spell: The Enduring Legend of Beatrice Cenci.
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was born in 1873 in a village in Burgundy, France, and 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; these included Cheri, depicting a relationship between an older woman and young man, and Gigi, the story of a young girl in training to become a courtesan. Colette died in 1954.
Belinda Jack (Translator)
Belinda Jack is the author of an acclaimed biography of George Sand and Beatrice's Spell: The Enduring Legend of Beatrice Cenci.