COLETTE, Sidonie Gabrielle (1873-1954)
Pièce autographe signée « Colette »
S.l., mai 1937, 1 p. in-8° carrée
« Colonel, Jules-Joseph Colette’s daughter… sends you her very cordial greetings. »
Fact sheet
COLETTE, Sidonie Gabrielle (1873-1954)
Pièce autographe signée « Colette »
S.l., mai 1937, 1 p. in-8° carrée on beige laid paper
Fine condition
Colette evokes her father in this dedication to a colonel in the French army
« Mon colonel, la fille de Jules-Joseph Colette, capitaine au 1er zouaves, qui laissa sa cuisse gauche à Melegano en 59, vous envoie son salut bien cordial.
Colette »
Jules-Joseph Colette (1829-1905), second husband of Sidonie Landoy (1835-1912), lost a leg at the Battle of Melegano in 1859 (a major episode in the Italian War of Independence, which pitted the French Empire against that of Austria and ended in a French victory). A graduate of Saint-Cyr and then a Zouave, Jules-Joseph Colette later became a tax collector. A great reader of newspapers, he had his daughter read the great classics of literature from a very young age, thus helping to develop her flair for writing.
Provenance:
[Album amicorum] Col. Henri Reine