THE COLLECTED STORIES OF COLETTE
Edited by Robert Phelps
Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 605 pages;
$19.95
One hundred collected stories by Colette make for a sumptuous display, rather like a table spread with the fruit and wine she celebrated in her books: "Late-ripening cherries, rosy peaches, thin-skinned Marseilles figs, misty hothouse grapes and champagne shuddering in carafes of heavy crystal."
Editor Robert Phelps has made the most of Colette's sensuous prose. Thirty-one stories in this volume have never before appeared in English, and 29 others have received fresh translations. Devotees of Gigi, Chéri and The Vagabond will encounter some of the author's familiar characters as she...
