The Vagabond
Will be published approx. on 4. June 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
978-0-241-57472-0 (ISBN)
Description
Renee, aged thirty-three and divorced from her serially unfaithful husband, reinvents herself as a dancer in France's music halls. When a wealthy suitor appears promising marriage and stability, Renee must choose between the security he represents and her hard-won life as an artist.
Colette's great novel of the stage was based on her experiences as a struggling music hall performer following her own divorce. By turns melancholy and funny, it is a pioneering work of autofiction and a vivid portrayal of one woman's quest for freedom.
Colette's great novel of the stage was based on her experiences as a struggling music hall performer following her own divorce. By turns melancholy and funny, it is a pioneering work of autofiction and a vivid portrayal of one woman's quest for freedom.
Reviews / Votes
A mistress of metaphor and sparking detail, and with more punch than Proust ... Throughout this extraordinary - irreplaceable! - novel, Colette provides many exquisitely timed funny-sad turns ... And no one writes about relationships as perceptively as Colette * Guardian * An enchanting, sincere and beautifully constructed novel * The New York Times * The most subtle of feminist novels ... It tells the story of a soul's quest for liberation and it asks all of the questions about marriage, love, jealousy, bisexuality, maleness and femaleness which our generation sometimes flatters itself it invented -- Erica Jong She explored her field without exhausting it or repeating herself, varying her approach as she grew older and more experienced...Intense and sensuous, her fiction is full of life and laughter, as she proceeded to tell the story of a woman's life, from childhood into age -- John Self * BBC Culture *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
978-0-241-57472-0 (9780241574720)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
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 is the author of an acclaimed biography of George Sand and Beatrice's Spell: The Enduring Legend of Beatrice Cenci.