Parc des Félins

and only five were rewarded by the all-woman jury of the Femina. The major exception was Colette (1873–1954) who, with La Vagabonde (1910), struck out on her own and, though no stranger to bohemian scandal, was admired for her independent spirit and feline prose, her insistence on the cruelty of love and her warmer defence of authentic being against the hypocrisy of the male-dominated Belle Époque which she had challenged. 1945–68 It was not until after 1945 that women writers began to emerge in