Books in Brief: The Collected Stories of Colette

The Collected Stories of Colette, edited by Robert Phelps (Farrar, 605 pp., $19.95)

Robert Phelps, who edited an influential anthology of Colette’s autobiographical writings called Earthly Paradise, is still at it; the latest product of his industry is a collection of one hundred pieces of “short fiction” by Colette. (Colette’s “fiction” is very hard to categorize, and Mr. Phelps goes so far as to divide it into four overlapping genres: autobiographical sketches, chroniques, “lyrical meditations whose mode is not narrative,” and short stories proper.) Thirty-one of these stories appear in English for the first time; 29 are newly translated by various hands. Mr. Phelps’s selection is sensible and his introduction—though too short—is astute. Colette has never been properly appreciated in the United States; The Collected Stories of Colette is a good way to get acquainted with the uniquely personal style of the author whom Glenway Wescott once called “a kind of female Montaigne.”