Volume 31, Number 7 · April 26, 1984
Not So Close to Colette
By Gabriele Annan
Colette
by Joanna Richardson
Franklin Watts, 276 pp., $17.95
The Collected Stories of Colette
edited with an introduction by Robert Phelps, translated by Matthew Ward, by Antonia White, by Anne-Marie Callimachi. others
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 605 pp., $22.50
No female novelist could be less like Jane Austen than Colette, but they share an unfortunate distinction: it is difficult to love either without finding oneself enrolled in a club. If there is no word corresponding to the horrible 'Janeite,' then it can only be for reasons of euphony. But in both cases the fans have got it wrong: they admire Jane Austen for being an adult's Kate Greenaway, and Colette, in the words of Glenway Wescott, for being 'a kind of female Montaigne.'
Review, 4239 words
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