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The Vagabond
Colette
  • Published: 8 September 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241574720
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $24.99

The Vagabond

Formats & editions
Paperback
8 Sept 2026
EBook
4 June 2026
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Colette's subversive and witty tale of a dancer in Belle Époque France, in a fresh new Penguin Classics translation

Renée, aged thirty-three and divorced from her serially unfaithful husband, reinvents herself as a dancer in France’s music halls. When a wealthy suitor appears promising marriage and stability, Renée must choose between the security he represents and her hard-won life as an artist.

Colette’s great novel of the stage was based on her experiences as a struggling music hall performer following her own divorce. By turns melancholy and funny, it is a pioneering work of autofiction and a vivid portrayal of one woman’s quest for freedom.
  • Published: 8 September 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241574720
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $24.99
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Praise for The Vagabond

She explored her field without exhausting it or repeating herself, varying her approach as she grew older and more experienced…Intense and sensuous, her fiction is full of life and laughter, as she proceeded to tell the story of a woman’s life, from childhood into age

John Self, BBC Culture