The novels included in this volume are representative of Colette's major work and show her genius in its various aspects.  In Claudine at School the clear-sighted amoral heroine foreshadows the heroines of Colette's mature novels, in what Janet Flanner has called her "girlish search for the absolute of happiness in physical love, unique feminine inventories of the senses, recorded by a literary brain always wide awake on the pillow."

The subtitle of Mitsou is "How Girls Learn." It is the story of a girl's education in love and her first attempts to win and keep the affection of a man of taste and culture.

Music-Hall Sidelights is autobiographical, describing in a sequence of short sketches the author's life as a touring actress.

Cheri and The Last of Cheri are perhaps Colette's most famous and most successful works, the story of a love affair between a very young man and a middle-aged woman.

Gigi is the story of a demimondaine who resists the arduous requirements demanded by her career but—in remaining wholly herself—succeeds nevertheless.