Les Quatre Claudine.

COLETTE, Sidonie-Gabrielle .

$975.00

Item Number: 94691

Paris: Pierre de Tartas, 1972-73.

Deluxe illustrated edition of Colette’s four Claudine books with the original lithographic frontispiece portrait by Jean Cocteau. Quartos, 4 volumes, bound in full gilt-decorated pebbled morocco with silk endleaves, top edges gilt, lithographic colored frontispiece portrait by Jean Cocteau, illustrated with 24 original colored lithographs per volume by Dauchot, Sala, Lelong and others. In near fine condition. Each volume housed in the original marbled slipcase.

Just before Colette's death in 1954, Katherine Anne Porter asserted in the New York Times that she was indefinitely "...the greatest living French writer of fiction; and that she was while Gide and Proust still lived." Written in diary form and published between 1900 and 1904, the Claudine series describes the growth to maturity of a young girl, Claudine, now thought to be largely autobiographical.