Colette, prodded by her first husband, Willy, began her writing career with Claudine at School, which catapulted the young author into instant, sensational success. Among the most autobiographical of Colette's works, these four novels are dominated by the child-woman Claudine, whose strength, humor, and zest for living make her seem almost a symbol for the life force.

Janet Flanner described these books as "amazing writing on the almost girlish search for the absolute of happiness in physical love . . . recorded by a literary brain always wide awake on the pillow."

When Clara returns home from the convent of her childhood to begin life at a local girls' school, she is at a loss: although she has comparative freedom, she misses the discipline the nuns imposed and worries about keeping her faith in a secular world. Against the background of the First World War, Clara experiences the confusions of adolescence - its promise, its threat of change. She longs for love, yet fears it, and wonders what the future will hold. Then tragedy strikes and her childhood haltingly comes to an end as she realises that neither parents nor her faith can help her.
The...

The year is 1920. Clara Batchelor, the heroine of The Lost Traveller, is now an actress with a touring repertory company and is passionately in love with the wholly unsuitable Stephen Tye. When Stephen betrays her, Clara betrays herself by agreeing to marry Archie, the fiance? she discarded four years before. A friendship but not a love match, the marriage is a desperate attempt by Clara to rekindle the safety of childhood. But neither of them are children any more and their dream sugar house begins to dissolve.
The Sugar House is the second in the trilogy sequel to Frost in May, which...