C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897)
Daudet, Alphonse (dō-dā’). A distinguished French novelist; born at Nîmes, May 13, 1840; died on Dec. 16, 1897. He sought fortune in Paris in 1857; two booklets of poems were failures; two plays—‘The Last Idol’ (1862) and ‘The White Daisy’ (1865)—had more success; after some years he discovered his true field. His charming little stories, ‘The Little Thing: Story of a Child’ (1868); ‘Letters from my Mill’ (1869); ‘Monday Tales’ (1873), established his reputation; and his next novel—‘Fromont Jr. and Risler Sr.’ (1874)—was translated into all the European languages. Not less celebrated are: ‘The Nabob’ (1878); ‘Kings in Exile’ (1880); ‘Numa Roumestan’ (1882); ‘The Gospeller’ (1883); ‘Sappho’ (1884). He struck a new and a happier vein in the Tartarin series: ‘Prodigious Adventures of Tartarin’; ‘Tartarin in the Alps’; ‘Port Tarascon.’ He writes reminiscences of his early years in the French capital in ‘Thirty Years of Paris’ (1888), and in ‘Recollections of a Man of Letters’ (1889). (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).