Prrou, Poucette and a Few Others

This is a transitional book, both in what it does and in how it survives. The animal writing here begins to move away from the frank talking-pet comedy of Animal Dialogues toward a quieter, more patient description of the puzzling bond between people and animals. The named creatures — Prrou, Poucette, Poum — carry the pieces, and the earlier cat-and-dog dialogue gives ground to observation.

Its bibliographic life is part of the story. Printed in a careful limited edition of 300 copies and never issued again as a separate book, Prrou, Poucette and a Few Others is a genuinely rare object. Almost every later reader meets its contents not here but inside Peace Among the Beasts (1916), which took up its twelve pieces whole.

For that reason the book matters as much as a first state as for its contents: it marks the point where Colette's animal writing turned from comedy toward attention, just before it found its fuller form in the wartime animal book.

There is no plot. The book gathers twelve short pieces about animals, centered on the creatures named in the title — Prrou, Poucette, and Poum — as the earlier double act of Kiki-la-Doucette and Toby-Chien recedes. The writing is beginning to move from the talking-pet comedy of Colette's first animal book toward patient description of the bond between humans and animals.

Its form on the shelf is part of what the page records. First published in 1913 in a limited edition of only 300 copies, it was never reissued on its own; its twelve pieces were absorbed in 1916 into the larger book Peace Among the Beasts, which is where nearly all later readers encounter them.