SOURCE: “A Woman of Valor & Value,” in Belles Lettres, Vol. 9, No. 4, Summer, 1994, pp. 22–23.

In the following positive review, Meister compliments Gray's portrayal of Colet in Rage and Fire.

The would-be biographer of Louise Colet faces a dilemma: Colet herself wanted and expected her contemporaries—and posterity—to judge her solely on the basis of her literary output; she resented innuendos suggesting that she traded on her beauty and sexuality to further her literary career and, even when in real financial need, refused any stipend she suspected of not being predicated on her merits as an author. The last thing she would have expected from the future was to be remembered as a mere appendage—and a negative one at that—to the life of another writer. But in study after study she is discussed as no more than an addendum to the central subject, her long-term lover Gustave...