The Vagabond - by Colette (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

One of three works now available from Penguin Classics U.S., a new translation of Colette's subversive and witty tale of a dancer in belle epoque France

A Penguin Classic

Renée, 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, Renée 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.

About the 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 semifictionalized 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 Chéri, a novella about a relationship between an older woman and a young man, and Gigi, the story of a young girl training to become a courtesan. Colette died in 1954.

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