Rosselli

Colette (1912-1996). Italian writer, painter, and journalist. Anyone who was a child in the 1940s will remember the book of Susanna, with which she debuted as a children’s illustrator. The most faithful readers of the women’s weekly Grazia will associate her name with the column of Donna Letizia, who answered readers’ letters, dispensing practical advice but also ironic and pungent commentary on how to live, later published as a book. She was born in Lausanne and took a degree in French language and literature. She was also a talented painter. She wrote many children’s books. Among them: Per bimbi buoni and cattivi, Il cavaliere Dodipetto, I poemetti di Susanna, and Prime rime. She also worked in the United States with Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle and Vogue. Educated, refined, with a special elegance all her own, made up of trousers and jackets, she loved to go for long walks in the mountains, but also to stay at home, in fact in any of her several homes, which she had furnished with great style, first of them all the one overlooking Rome’s Piazza Navona, and which she had described in Casa di randagia (1989), one of her last books, along with Ma non troppo (1986) and Nuovo saper vivere (1991). Married to Indro Montanelli (second marriage), she died in Rome.