About this Book

"Whatever perception the public holds of the famed French writer is an image carefully cultivated by Colette herself," wrote the Boston Globe in its review of the first volume of this definitive two-volume biography of the writer whose own life was her most amazing invention. "By the time of her death at age 81 in 1954, Colette was more icon than woman, swaddled in grand myth and naughty innuendo." Creating Colette is the first and only biography to offer a thorough reexamination, supported by extensive research and newly unearthed documentation, of the standard accounts of Colette's personal history. Authors of a previous biography of Marcel Proust and the award-winning biography of Simone de Beauvoir, Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier take the reader on a dazzling tour of Colette's Paris, a journey through her times that is as lively and entertaining as it is revealing and satisfying.