Journalists loved the fact that these scandalous novels cleverly blurred the lines between fiction and autobiography. The books made Willy and Colette literary stars -although not always taken seriously by the literary establishment — as well as regular features of the gossip columns.
In these stories her beloved pets do the talking. As a slightly obsessive cat lover, I have always had a weak spot for both Colette and this book. Critics in felt the same. One of the beauties and one of the dangers of using digital archives is that a random keyword search can lead you on a fascinating journey through the past in which apparently random events suddenly seem surprisingly connected.
One of the first things that came up was this photograph of Bristol Rovers playing Southampton in the Parc des Princes stadium —then primarily a velodrome — in March Here is another photographic treasure from Gallica showing the exhausted winner of the last stage of the Tour and third overall, Frenchman Jean Alavoine , being held on his bicycle by flowers and men with facial hair.
But a lot more was happening in in the Parc des Princes. A month after the Bristol Rovers-Southampton match the poet F. Marinetti , leader of the Futurists, duelled writer and critic Charles Henri-Hirsch in the stadium on 16 April. And also this one , the one who always drank Vin Mariani when writing newspaper articles.
She was also a writer. In fact she was a prize-winning poet in her time, but she seems to have been completely forgotten by literary history.
