From the moment the success of Bonjour Tristesse catapulted her into worldwide fame, Francoise Sagan has remained a favorite subject of international conversation. Her literary reputation, celebrity friends, and fast-living habits long guaranteed her a spot in the social columns. Yet she remained a very private person and none but her close friends were allowed a glimpse into her inner life. Now for the first time Sagan has opened the book on that life, writing about some of the famous people she has known and about herself. There are tributes to Billie Holiday, Jean-Paul Sartre; revealing cameos of Orson Welles, Rudolf Nureyev, Carson McCullers; a wistful evocation of Tennessee Williams. There are episodes from a life led on the brink: tales of all-night gambling and fast cars: a hilarious account of the author's adventures in the theatre: a nostalgic memoir of Saint Tropez when it was still just a fishing village: and brief essays on games of chance and the gifts of literature. With Fondest Regards is a seamless series of anecdotes that resound with generosity and brio, a literary entertainment about life among the privileged, the creative and the famous. And because it is also a work of love it is a book that we want never to end.
Author
Born Françoise Quoirez, Sagan grew up in a French Catholic, bourgeois family. She was an independent thinker and avid reader as a young girl, and upon failing her examinations for continuing at the Sorbonne, she became a writer. She went to her family's home in the south of France and wrote her first novel, Bonjour Tristesse, at age 18. She submitted it to Editions Juillard in January 1954 and it was published that March. Later that year, She won the Prix des Critiques for Bonjour Tristesse. She chose "Sagan" as her pen name because she liked the sound of it and also liked the reference to the Prince and Princesse de Sagan, 19th century Parisians, who are said to be the basis of some of Marcel Proust's characters. She was known for her love of drinking, gambling, and fast driving. Her habit of driving fast was moderated after a serious car accident in 1957 involving her Aston Martin while she was living in Milly, France. Sagan was twice married and divorced, and subsequently maintained several long-term lesbian relationships. First married in 1958 to Guy Schoeller, a publisher, they divorced in 1960, and she was then married to Robert James Westhoff, an American ceramicist and sculptor, from 1962 to 63. She had one son, Denis, from her second marriage. She won the Prix de Monaco in 1984 in recognition of all of her work.
