Colette - La maison de Claudine [Envoi autographe —Ex sur Vergé- Provenance] - 1927

Colette

Claudine's House

The City of Books, 17th volume of the collection The French Novel of Today, 1927, paperback in 8vo of 219 pages

Copy on Vergé paper

Signed autograph inscription by the author on the flyleaf to René Benjamin, writer, journalist, lecturer.

He is the author of a series of studies of mores about the Palais de Justice, the Sorbonne, the Hôtel des Ventes. His novel, Gaspard, won the Goncourt Prize in 1915. He wrote it at the Tours hospital, where he stayed for several months, having been seriously wounded in 1914. He had several plays produced on stage and did portraitist work with works devoted to Antoine, to Barrès, to Balzac, to Maurras, to Sacha Guitry and to Molière. His Prodigious Life of Honoré de Balzac (1925) launched the once-famous collection of the “Roman des grandes existences” of the Plon bookstore. Friend of Maurras and Léon Daudet, he supported Marshal Pétain during the German occupation. He had entered the Goncourt Academy in 1938, but from 1944, while La Varende preferred to resign, he was no longer summoned to the academy lunches, just like Jean Ajalbert and Sacha Guitry.

This autobiographical book tells, through short scenes, of his happy youth in the countryside, depicting his mother, his father and some of his pets. Despite its title, this narrative does not belong to the “Claudine” series that launched its author's career. The only link is that the French house in the title and the town of Saint-Sauveur in Puisaye, mentioned in the book, served as the model for Montigny of Claudine in the novels.