In a Familiar Land

The book exists in two quite different states. The first, in 1949, was a large illustrated luxury edition from Manuel Bruker, built around an homage to the painter Luc-Albert Moreau and gathering just six pieces. The second, a Ferenczi trade edition of 1950, expanded the book to some fifty pieces and is the version most readers know. This page treats both states as one work.

The prose is late Colette on familiar ground — landscape, the countryside of her Burgundy, remembered places and people — written with the painterly attention of a writer who trusts the eye. The homage to Moreau is the clearest key: her praise of how he makes trees breathe and water live is close to a description of her own aesthetic, and the book is one of her better late places for reading her on landscape and memory. Several of its pieces had appeared, in periodicals, in the years before and during the war.

In a Familiar Land belongs with Colette's other late gatherings, and with At Hand it later stood as one of the collections assembled into Volume XIV of her Œuvres complètes.

There is no plot. The book gathers late prose on familiar ground — landscape, the countryside of Colette's Burgundy, remembered places and people — with an opening homage to the painter Luc-Albert Moreau. The pieces are meditations and descriptions rather than stories, written with a painterly attention to seeing.

Its form is worth noting: the book appeared first in 1949 as a deluxe illustrated volume of six pieces, then in 1950 as a Ferenczi trade edition expanded to about fifty. Several of the pieces had appeared earlier in periodicals, in the years around the war. This page covers both states as one work.