La Seconde

After repeated delays and a text long postponed — Colette had first conceived this novel as early as August 1922 — La Seconde appeared, with some cuts, as a serial in Les Annales, the review directed by Pierre Brisson, from 1 January to 1 March 1929.

It was “difficult to write,” she confided to Marguerite Moreno: “…I have finished. I can hardly believe it. Nothing remains now but the small torments of proofs and other typographical mischief.” The working title had been “Le Double,” but the novel was published as La Seconde. This story of a romantic triangle, driven by jealousy and deceit, drew on Colette’s own life: readers have long recognized traces of her relationship with Henry de Jouvenel, and the friendship between Fanny and Jane in the novel echoes Colette’s own bond with her rival, Germaine Patat: “the rivalry between two women in love with the same man turns into a complementary solidarity in the face of incurable male carelessness… Colette had already explored this situation in a story from La Femme cachée, ‘Le Portrait,’ in which two friends end up despising the man they had both loved” (Société des amis de Colette, “Présentation de l’œuvre”). Tightly constructed and well suited to stage adaptation, the novel was brought to the theater in 1951 by Colette and Léopold Marchand, the playwright who had already collaborated on the adaptations of Chéri in 1921 and La Vagabonde in 1923. The premiere took place at the Théâtre de la Madeleine, with Maria Casarès in the role of Fanny, on 15 January 1951, in a production directed by Jean Wall.

A fine copy with wide margins.