Violette Leduc - Definition

Violette Leduc was born April 7, 1907, in Arras Pas de Calais, France, the illegitimate daughter of a servant girl, Berthe.

In Valenciennes, the young Violette spent most of her childhood suffering from poor self-esteem, exacerbated by her mother's hostility and overprotectiveness. She developed tender friendships with her grandmother Fideline and her maternal aunt Laure.

Her formal education, begun in 1913, was interrupted by World War I. After the war, she went to a boarding school, the Collège de Duoai, where she experienced lesbian affairs with a classmate and a music instructor who was fired over the incident.

In 1926, Leduc moved to Paris and enrolled in the Lycée Racine. That same year, she failed her baccalaureate exam and began working as a telephone operator and secretary at Plon publishers.

In 1932 she met Maurice Sachs and Simone de Beauvoir, who encouraged her to write. Her first novel L'Asphyxie (In the Prison of Her Skin) was published by Albert Camus for Éditions Gallimard and earned her praise from Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet.

In 1964 Leduc's memoir La Bâtarde was published. It nearly won the prestigious Prix Goncourt and quickly became a bestseller. She went on to write eight more books, including La Folie en tete (Mad in Pursuit), the second part of her literary autobiography.

In 1968 Radley Metzger made a film of Leduc's novel Therese and Isabelle. The film was a commercial feature about adolescent lesbian love, starring Essy Persson and Anna Gae.

Leduc developed breast cancer and, after two operations, died on May 28, 1972.

List of works

• L'Asphyxie, 1945.
• L’affamee, 1948.
• Ravages, 1955.
• La vieille fille et le mort, 1958.
• Golden Buttons, 1961.
• La Bâtarde, 1964.
• Thérèse et Isabelle, 1966.
• Lady and the Little Fox Fur, 1967.
• Folie en tête., 1970.
• Taxi, 1973.
• Chasse à l'amour, 1972.