Chanel: Her Life, Her World, and the Woman Behind the Legend She Herself Created

Edmonde Charles-Roux was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France on April 17, 1920. Soon after the fall of France in World War II, she received a nursing diploma and volunteered to serve in an ambulance corps of the French Foreign Legion. At Verdun, she was wounded during an aerial bombardment of the field hospital where she was working but stayed at her post. After serving with the Resistance in Provence, she was wounded again when the First French Army advanced into Austria. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor. In 1946, she worked as a writer for Elle. Two years later, she began writing for the French edition of Vogue. She was the editor in chief there from 1954 to 1966. Her first novel, To Forget Palermo, was published in 1966 and won the Prix Goncourt, France's biggest literary prize. Her other works include Chanel: Her Life, Her World - and the Woman Behind the Legend She Herself Created; Chanel and Her World; She, Adrienne; and a two-volume biography of the Swiss explorer and writer Isabelle Eberhardt. She died on January 20, 2016 at the age of 95.