The latest addition to my website is Colette‘s L’Ingénue libertine (The Innocent Libertine). This was originally published as two separate books but then combined into one in translation. It tells the story of Minne who, in the first book, is a fourteen tyear old schoolgirl in Paris, daughter of a widow. There has been gang warfare in the area and Minne has fallen for Curly, the gang leader whom she has not met, though she thinks a man she sees in the neighbourhood is Curly.. However her cousin Antoine is in love with her. She pursues a man she thinks is Curly but gets lost. The second book sees her married to Antoine but having a few unsatisfactory affairs and mixing in society. In both books she is still not sure what she wants from life and struggles to find her role and, like her creator, maintain her independence.