La Retraite Sentimentale
1914 edition of Colette's first sole authorship novel
Author
Publisher
Printing Details
Reprint (Edition Definitive). Hardback, bound in marbled paper covered boards, paper title label to spine. 18.5 × 12.5cm, 291pp. French text.
In an isolated farmhouse in the Jura, Claudine awaits her husband Renaud's return from a Swiss sanatorium. She distracts herself by encouraging her young friend Annie to recount salacious episodes from her love life. When Renaud's homosexual son Marcel arrives, Claudine sets about matchmaking, a fiasco she bitterly regrets. With Renaud's death, Claudine's ennui is transmuted into resigned suffering. But she gradually allows the rhythm and beauty of the natural world to reawaken her desire to live. Retreat From Love, first published in 1907, was the first of Colette's novels to be written without the collaboration of her husband 'Willy', from whom she had recently separated.
Condition
There is light bumping to the corners and spine ends but otherwise this is a very sound early printing.
