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The Vagabond
Brief Description
The Vagabond is Colette's subversive and witty tale of a dancer in Belle Époque France, presented here in a fresh new Penguin Classics translation. Renée, aged thirty-three and divorced from her serially unfaithful husband, reinvents herself as a dancer in France's music halls. When a wealthy...
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Description
The Vagabond is Colette's subversive and witty tale of a dancer in Belle Époque France, presented here in a fresh new Penguin Classics translation.
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 is based on her own 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.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780241574720
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 27 August 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Contributors:
- Translated by Belinda Jack
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 15.0mm
Width: 129.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 200g
Pages: 208
About the Author
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.
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