Daudet, Alphonse (1840-1897)

French novelist. He wrote about his native Provence in Lettres de mon moulin/Letters from My Mill (1866), and created the character Tartarin, a hero epitomizing southern temperament, in Tartarin de Tarascon (1872) and two sequels.

Other works include the play L'Arlésienne/The Woman from Arles (1872), for which Georges Bizet composed the music; and Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres/Recollections of a Literary Man (1889).

Daudet, born in Nîmes, became a journalist in Paris. His first book of verse was Les Amoureuses/The Lovers (1858). Le Petit Chose/Young What's His Name (1868) contained memories of his early life. The sequels to Tartarin de Tarascon are Tartarin sur les Alpes/Tartarin in the Alps (1885) and Port Tarascon (1890); other novels include Fromont jeune et Risler aîné/Young Fromont and Old Risler (1874), Le Nabab/The Nabob (1877), and L'Immortel/The Immortal One (1888), which contains a savage satire on the French Academy.

His Trente ans de Paris/Thirty Years of Paris (1888) gives a vivid picture of Daudet's literary and social life. Among the charming stories he wrote for children is La Belle Nivernaise/The Beautiful Woman from Nivernais (1886).