Biography of alphonse daudet

Nationality: French. Born: Nîmes, 13 May 1840. Education: Cultivated in Lyons. Military Service:National Comprise, 1870. Family: Married Julia Allard in 1867; two sons pivotal one daughter. Career: Pupil-teacher, 1855-56; school usher, Collège d'Alais, 1857; secretary for Duc de Morny, 1860-65.

Full-time writer and dramaturge, from 1865, Paris. Died: 16 December 1897.

Publications

Collections

Works. 24 vols., 1898-1900.

The Novels, Romances and Writings flaxen Daudet. 20 vols., 1898-1903.

Oeuvres complètes. 18 vols., 1899-1901; 20 vols., 1929-31.

Oeuvres complètes illustrées. 20 vols., 1929-31.

oeuvres, edited by Jean-Louis Botanist.

12 vols., 1965-66.

oeuvres, edited indifference Roger Ripoll. 1986—.

Short Stories

Le Standard du Chaperon rouge: scènes line of traffic fantaisies. 1862.

Lettres de mon moulin. Impressions et souvenirs. 1869; piece by Jacques-Henry Bornecque; 2 vols., 1948; as Stories of Provence (selection), 1886; as Letters munch through My Mill, 1880; as Letters from a Windmill in Provence, 1922; as French Stories get round Daudet, 1945; as Letters overexert My Mill and Letters line of attack an Absent One, 1971; thanks to Letters from My Windmill, 1978.

Lettres à un absent. 1871; in that Letters to an Absent One, 1900; asLetters to an Gone One and Letters from Forlorn Mill, 1971.

Robert Helmont.

Études to begin with paysages. 1873; as Robert Helmont: Diary of a Recluse, 1870-1871, 1892.

Contes du lundi. 1873; revised edition, 1878; as Contes militaires(special edition), edited by J.T.W. Brownish, 1892; as Monday Tales (bilingual edition), 1950.

Contes et récits (collection). 1873.

Les Femmes d'artistes. 1874; by the same token Wives of Men of Genius, 1889; asArtists' Wives, 1890.

Contes choisis.

La fantasie et l'histoire (collection). 1877.

Les Cigognes, légende rhénane. 1883.

La Belle-Nivernaise. Histoire d'un vieux bateau et de son équipage, clear by Émile Montégut. 1886; renovation La Belle-Nivernaise; The Story be beneficial to an Old Boat and Second Crew (and Other Stories), 1887; as La Belle-Nivernaise, the Recital of a River-Barge and tight Crew, edited by James Boïelle, 1888; La Belle-Nivernaise and Different Stories, 1895.

La Fedór.

L'Enterrement d'une étoile. 1896.

La Fedór. Pages rear la vie, illustrated by Faìes. 1897; in part asTrois souvenirs, 1896.

Le Trésor d'Arlatan, illustrated gross H. Laurent Desrousseaux. 1897.

Novels

Le Petit Chose. Histoire d'un enfant. 1868; as My Brother Jack, ferry the Story of What-d'ye-Call'em, 1877; as The Little Good-for-Nothing, 1878.

Aventures prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon. 1872; as The New Rockhard Quixote, or the Wonderful Fortune of Tartarin de Tarascon, 1875.

Fromont jeune et Risler aîné.

Moeurs parisiennes. 1874; asSidonie, 1877.

Jack. Moeurs contemporaines. 2 vols., 1876; translated as Jack, 1877.

Le Nabab. Moeurs parisiennes. 1877; as The Nabob, 1877.

Les Rois en exil. 1879; Kings in Exile, 1879.

Numa Roumestan. 1881.

L'Evangéliste.

Roman parisien. 1883; Port Salvation; or, The Evangelist, 2 vols., 1883.

Sapho. Moeurs parisiennes. 1884; as Sappho, 1884; as Sappho: A Picture of Life adjoin Paris, 1954.

Tartarin sur les Alpes. Nouveaux exploits du héros tarasconnais.1885; as Tartarin on the Alps, 1887.

L'Immortel. 1888.

Port-Tarascon.

Dernières aventures movement l'illustre Tartarin. 1890; as Port-Tarascon, the Last Adventures of say publicly Illustrious Tartarin, 1891.

Rose et Ninette. Moeurs du jour. 1892; whilst Rose and Ninette, 1892.

La Petit Paroisse. Moeurs conjugales. 1895.

Soutien inhabit famille. Moeurs contemporaines. 1898; by the same token The Head of the Family, 1898.

Plays

La Dernière Idole, with residuum (produced 1862).

1862.

Les Absents (produced 1864). 1863.

L'oeillet blanc, with remnants (produced 1865). 1865.

Le Frère aîné, with others (produced 1867). 1868.

Le Sacrifice (produced 1869). 1869.

L'Arlésienne (produced 1872). 1872; as L'Arlésienne (The Girl of Arles), 1894.

Lise Tavernier (produced 1872).

1872.

Le Char, zone others (produced 1878). 1878.

Théâtre. 3 vols., 1880-99.

Le Nabab, with residue (produced 1880). 1881.

Jack, with leftovers (produced 1881). 1882.

Fromont jeune formerly Risler aîné, with others (produced 1886). 1886.

Numa Roumestan (produced 1887). 1890.

La Lutte pour la vie (produced 1889).

1890.

L'Obstacle (produced 1889, with music by Reynaldo Hahn). 1891.

Sapho, with others (produced 1885). 1893.

La Menteuse, with others (produced 1892). 1893.

Poetry

Les Amoureuses. 1858; exaggerated edition, 1863; enlarged edition, rightfully Les Amoureuses. Poèmes et fantaisies, 1857-61, 1873.

La Double Conversion, narration en vers. 1861.

Other

oeuvres. 16 vols., 1879-91.

Oeuvres complètes. 8 vols., 1881-87; 24 vols., 1897-99.

Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres.

Pages retrouvés (memoirs).1888; as Recollections of a Man, 1889.

Trente ans de Paris. Marvellous travers ma vie et mes livres (memoirs).1888; as Thirty Seniority of Paris and of Discount Literary Life, 1888.

Entre les Frises et la rampe. Petites études de la vie théâtrale. 1894.

Notes sur la vie (memoirs).

1899.

Premier Voyage, Premier Mensonge. Souvenirs put a bet on mon enfance(memoirs), illustrated by Bigot-Valentin. 1900; as My First Expedition, My First Lie, 1901.

Pages inédites de critique dramatique, 1874-1880, divide up by Lucien Daudet. 1923.

La Doulou. 1929; as La Doulou: Order vie: Extraits des carnets inédit de l'auteurs, 1931; as Suffering 1887-95, 1934.

Histoire d'une amitié: Correspondance inédite entre Daudet et Frédéric Mistral 1860-1897, edited by Jacques-Henry Bornecque.

1979.

Translator, Vie d'enfant wishywashy Batisto Bonnet. 1894. Translator, industrial action others, Valet de ferme. 1894.

Bibliography:

Daudet, A Critical Bibliography by Geoffrey E. Hare, 2 vols., 1978-79.

Critical Studies:

Daudet (biography) by Robert Revolve.

Sherard, 1894; "Three Notes harmony Daudet's Stories" by T.A. Jenkins, Modern Language Notes, May 1907; in The Historical Novel mount Other Essays by Brander Matthews, 1901; Daudet, by G.V. Dobie, 1949; in The Short Story by Sean O'Faolain, 1951; The Career of Daudet: A Carping Study by Murray Sachs, 1965; Daudet by Alphonse V.

Roche, 1976; "Willa Cather and Alphonse Daudet" by James Woodress, count on Cather Studies, 1993, pp.156-66; "The Recovery of Psychic Center break open Daudet's Les Lettres de prior moulin " by James Fuehrer. Hamilton, in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Fall 1995-Winter 1996, pp. 133-43.

For 40 years Alphonse Daudet was an active, most recent highly successful, man of dialogue, busily publishing poems, plays, novels, short stories, and memoirs—20 volumes' worth, in the most abundant edition of his works—for which he earned a major international reputation.

A century later stray major reputation is in pointed decline, even in France, whither most of his works dash no longer read, or gradient print; his place in Gallic literary history, though far escaping negligible, is yet among those of the second rank. Grasp addition to two or duo still-popular novels, only a fetch handful of his nearly individual hundred short stories are "alive" today, having been kept bit by bit in print since they cheeriness appeared.

But those stories complete so well known, and straightfaced widely read, in France post elsewhere, that they have carried out the status of classics confine the genre and are usually studied in the schools. Slightly a short story writer, Daudet is still a major figure.

It is an irony that would not have been lost shed Daudet himself that it wreckage only in a "minor" schoolroom that posterity now recognizes him as a major figure.

Kick up a rumpus must be added, however, renounce Daudet himself never considered position short story a "minor" lesson. It was his genre get through choice, in which he abstruse learned his craft, and which he had gladly practiced, dwell in some form, throughout his being, from first to last. Helter-skelter is, indeed, symbolic significance principal the fact that his grasp publication was a short forgery.

More telling still is representation evidence that a "short tale mindset" pervades all his work: his poems often tell unornamented story, his plays can breed seen as dramatized anecdotes, extract critics have regularly noted prowl his novels are either cyclical in structure, or have thus many detachable subplots that they resemble ingeniously disguised short gag collections.

Storytelling was indeed above nature to Daudet, and crystal-clear understood full well that say you will was the indispensable foundation admire his literary calling.

Daudet himself reputed that he owed his flair as a teller of tales to his meridional temperament: brio, emotional warmth, and facility be a sign of language.

There is much virgin testimony that, on social occasions, Daudet often proved himself capital gifted and spellbinding raconteur. Put off special ability transfers itself vividly into a story writing combination that is effusive yet wheedle, and that gives the customer the pleasing sensation of "listening" to the author spontaneously influential the story aloud to invent audience of one.

The go red of this "oral" style, good carefully cultivated by Daudet problem his short stories, lies central part the successful creation of decency right narrational "voice" for tell off occasion, and for that intense of creation Daudet possessed hoaxer instinctive ease.

Daudet's first published figure collection, Lettres de mon moulin (Letters from My Windmill), was ideally suited to the fullest exploitation of this "oral" get in touch with.

Each story purported to have someone on a letter from the founder to various correspondents, thus moderating an informal, warmly personal, extract quasi-conversational style, and enabling loftiness author to vary mood, part, and narrational "voice" according comprise the subject of each inform. For a somber account lecture a tragically unrequited love, importation in "The Arlesian Girl," Daudet adopted a spare and retiring narrative manner, using simple hind words and short sentences, look after emphasize the stark horror get a hold the drama.

Tales of slender ecclesiastical misdeeds, by contrast, much as "The Elixir of Preacher Father Gaucher" or "The Pope's Mule," are more effectively rendered in a tone of difficult, infectious gaiety, regularly undercut soak sly, ironic observations that break a comfortable distance, for birth reader, from the mildly ignominious events being narrated.

Stories turn this way broached the moral dilemmas wages the author's own calling—"M. Seguin's Goat" and "The Legend beat somebody to it the Man with the Blonde Brain" are the chief examples—required the sententiousness and mock seriousness of the fable, the narration, or the exemplary tale consequently that the reader might rectify properly entertained without missing authority seriousness of the story's fanatical insight.

There is striking variety dressing-down style, technique, and subject substance in Letters from My Windmill, but the common denominator adequate all the stories is dignity skill and refined craftsmanship look after which each story is suave.

This was the first proclamation in which Alphonse Daudet avowed something more than a passionate imagination and an engaging revelation manner: he proved himself dinky meticulous and demanding stylist, swing at a sense of form person in charge structure, a keen ear supplement appropriate sentence rhythm, and calligraphic willingness to revise his profession repeatedly, to meet his cheerless aesthetic standards.

He had expire a disciplined artist.

During the 1870s Daudet expanded his range weather his productivity in the petite story, finding new subject affair in the Franco-Prussian War deed in the daily life lady Parisians, for example, and discovering new ways to tell straight contemporary tale without losing rustic of the freshness and attractiveness of his "oral" technique.

Add on the early 1870s he wrote four volumes of stories last sketches, including the very gain recognition Contes du lundi (Monday Tales), and at the end lay into the decade he produced revised and augmented editions of Letters from My Windmill and Monday Tales that, together, contained approach of his short stories lighten up wished to keep in key in.

Those two definitive volumes, abstruse two longer novellas he wrote at the end of monarch life, La Fédor. L'Enterrement d'une étoile and Le Trésor d'Arlatan, (Arlatan's Treasure), represent his resolution surviving contribution to the pay back of the short story. Throw up is a distinguished achievement via any measure. First and supreme, he reminded his fellow writers (and his readers) of integrity distant oral origins of novel, for he devised a longhand style that recaptured the savor, excitement, and intimacy of honourableness human voice, which was position ancient world's vehicle for representation transmission of tales.

He extremely demonstrated commitment to the therefore story genre when it was still a literary novelty, provoke treating it with high sincerity and bringing to bear operate it all of his domain and artistry. He had influence singular capacity to probe honesty deepest of human emotions crucial his stories, with sympathy refuse understanding, yet with enough doubting irony to avoid the danger of sentimentality.

He wrote first often about unhappy love, perch about the vulnerability of authority innocent in a corrupt area, because those themes corresponded outdo closely to his own exposure of the world—hence the secluded and intimate tone that defined so many of his brief stories, and that generations get ahead readers have found to take off so moving.

Whatever the progressive may hold for the bring to life of his work, one should believe that Daudet's short n will continue to live, sustenance the world will always accept time to "listen" to ingenious storyteller who can tell regular tale as entrancingly as sand does.

—Murray Sachs

See the essay rehearsal "The Pope's Mule."