Looking Backwards
The companion wartime book, gathered in the same years and meeting the Occupation by writing through it.
Read our take
From My Window
by Colette
Occupied Paris, watched and described from a single window — practical, intimate, and an irreplaceable record of the city's wartime life.
- 1942
About Colette
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeFrom My Window is a collection of Colette's wartime chronicles, published in 1942. After returning to Paris in 1940, she resumed a weekly newspaper column and turned it into a book: practical writing about getting through the Occupation — cold, shortages, improvisation, keeping up morale — set beside what she could see and remember from her window. It is less a memoir than a wartime observatory, and later readers have valued it as a close record of ordinary Parisian life under the Occupation. An expanded version later appeared as Paris de ma fenêtre. (What's inside is described below.)
The story, in more detail
The book grew out of the column Colette wrote for women during the Occupation, on subjects she noted men dismissed as not their concern: how to stay warm, how to make do, how to hold a household and a mood together as the city went short of everything. She writes as a public counselor, plain and steady, and the practical advice is part of the historical record the book preserves.
But the window is the book's real device. From it Colette watches children, cats, the theater, the street, and lets memory carry the view back into other years. The fixed frame concentrates her attention: confined to what one vantage can see, she sees closely. The result is a portrait of occupied Paris built from small, exact observations rather than from events.
From My Window belongs with Colette's other wartime writing, especially Looking Backwards, and shares its method of meeting a dark time by recording it steadily. She later enlarged the book, and it appeared in expanded form under the title Paris de ma fenêtre.
What's inside
There is no plot. The book collects short wartime chronicles Colette wrote after returning to Paris in 1940 — originally a weekly newspaper column for women. Many pieces are practical: how to endure the cold, the shortages, and the restrictions of the Occupation, and how to keep up morale and a household under them.
Woven through the practical writing is everything Colette watches and remembers from her window — children, cats, the theater, the street below — with memory carrying the fixed view back into earlier years. The window works as both frame and method, concentrating her attention on what one vantage can hold. Together the pieces form a close, ground-level record of ordinary Parisian life under the Occupation. An enlarged version was later published as Paris de ma fenêtre.
Themes and analysis
The window as a way of seeing
In the expanded Paris de ma fenêtre, the window frames workers' torchlights before dawn. A patch of moving light gradually resolves into legs and shoes, bringing an unknown passerby's effort into view without pretending to know her life. The narrator wonders when those legs rose and when they will rest. Even her greeting is uncertain: the clock says morning, but the darkness suggests night. This small hesitation exposes a mismatch between imposed working hours and bodily rhythms. Observation becomes a question about other people's fatigue, not simply the enjoyment of a picturesque street.
Keeping a household going
The expanded collection's cold-weather sequence briefly returns to a childhood memory of a fragrant household remedy, then admits that a happy recollection offers little protection against cold. That correction keeps nostalgia from solving a material crisis. The following reflection contrasts improvised survival with former confidence in taps, heaters and well-supplied homes. Comfort appears as a network of resources that can fail, not a permanent achievement. Read beside the mending image, the passage gives domestic effort its difficult scale: household ingenuity matters, but it cannot by itself restore the fuel and security on which ordinary routines depended.
Why we recommend it
Occupied Paris, up close
A ground-level record of how the city actually lived through the Occupation — cold, shortage, and small persistence.
The window as a way of seeing
Confined to one vantage, Colette watches children, cats, and the street with the concentration the frame forces on her.
Practical writing as history
The advice on getting through the winter is itself the document — an irreplaceable witness to wartime Parisian life.
What this book explores
Bring it to book club
- Colette turns practical advice — how to stay warm, how to make do — into a book. Why does that everyday writing become valuable history?
- The window is a fixed frame. How does confining the view change what Colette notices?
- The book met the Occupation by recording it steadily rather than dramatizing it. What does that restraint preserve?
Timeline
1940
Colette returns to Paris and resumes a weekly newspaper column under the Occupation.
1942
De ma fenêtre is published by Aux Armes de France, gathering the wartime chronicles.
1944
An enlarged version appears as Paris de ma fenêtre.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- 1942
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- 1944
Paperback
- Paperback
Ebook
- Ebook
Reader reviews
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Three… Six… Nine…
The nearby late self-portrait, telling Colette's Paris life through the rooms she lived in.
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The Evening Star
The later memoir that returns to the war years from the greater distance of old age.
Read our takeFrom My Window: frequently asked questions
Who wrote From My Window?
Colette. De ma fenêtre was published in 1942, drawn from the weekly newspaper column she wrote after returning to Paris in 1940.
What is the book about?
It gathers wartime chronicles of occupied Paris — practical writing about cold, shortages, and morale — set beside what Colette watched and remembered from her window.
Is it a novel?
No. It is a collection of short chronicles without a continuous plot, closer to a wartime observatory than to fiction or shaped memoir.
What is Paris de ma fenêtre?
It is the later, enlarged version of the same book. Colette expanded De ma fenêtre, and it reappeared under the title Paris de ma fenêtre — a fuller state of the same wartime project, not a separate work.
Is From My Window available in English?
There is no securely verified standalone English edition under this title.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document From My Window, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1From My Window
NovelColette, 1942Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Paris de ma fenêtre — expanded collection, Ferenczi 1948
WebsiteWikisourceUsed forSelected dawn/torchlight passages in section II and the cold/weather sequence beginning Il fait froid in section III of the expanded Paris de ma fenêtre, Ferenczi 1948. The additions explicitly concern that expanded text; membership in the original 1942 De ma fenêtre has not been collated. No medical advice or original illustration inspection is intended.
3Colette — bibliography of original editions
WebsiteSociété des amis de ColetteUsed forThe Société des amis de Colette bibliography verifies the original edition's publisher and publication date.
4Société des amis de Colette — Chronology
WebsiteUsed forUsed to place From My Window within Colette's published work and verify its bibliographic context.
5Bibliothèque nationale de France — The Worlds of Colette
Exhibition catalogueUsed forUsed for independent biographical, archival, or historical context surrounding Colette's career and the period in which From My Window appeared.
6Library of Congress — Colette resource guide
WebsiteUsed forUsed to cross-check authorship, chronology, and the work's place in Colette's wider catalogue.
7Bibliothèque nationale de France — Colette: online resources
WebsiteUsed forUsed to verify Colette's bibliography and place From My Window within the broader chronology of Colette's career.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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