Biography of alphonse daudet

Lettres de mon moulin

This collection of short stories and tales refers to the Saint-Pierre windmill, located in Fontvieille in the Alpilles. The ballads, fables and stories take place mainly in Provence, but also in Corsica and Algeria.

La Diligence de Beaucaire tells the story of a Parisian who travels to Provence and stops for a while in Baucaire.

The Secret of Master Cornillerelates the difficulties encountered by Master Cornille, a miller near Tarascon, whose mill faces competition from a steam mill.

L&#;Arlésienne, later adapted into a play, tells of the disappointed feelings of Jan. The country boy falls madly in love with a girl from the city of Arles. An Arlesienne is nowadays a person that everyone talks about, but no one sees.

With Le Poète Mistral, Alphonse Daudet pays tribute to the Provençal language and to its most fervent defender, Frédéric Mistral, one of the seven founders of the Félibrige.

With En Camargue, he invites the reader to a wild duck hunt near the Vaccarès pond. This story allows us to share the daily life of the inhabitants of this wild land: shepherds, manadiers, gamekeepers&#;

French novelist

Alphonse Daudet (French:[dodɛ]; 13 May &#;&#; 16 December ) was a French novelist. He was the husband of Julia Daudet and father of Edmée, Léon and Lucien Daudet.

Early life

Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the bourgeoisie. His father, Vincent Daudet, was a silk manufacturer—a man dogged through life by misfortune and failure. Alphonse, amid much truancy, had a depressing boyhood. In he left Lyon, where his schooldays had been mainly spent, and began his career as a schoolteacher at Alès, Gard, in the south of France. The position proved to be intolerable and Daudet said later that for months after leaving Alès he would wake with horror, thinking he was still among his unruly pupils. These experiences and others were reflected in his novel Le Petit Chose.

On 1 November , he abandoned teaching and took refuge with his brother Ernest Daudet, three years his senior, who was trying, "and thereto soberly", to make a living as a journalist in Paris. Alphonse took to writing, and his poems were collected into a small volume, Les Amoureuses (), which met with a fair reception. He obtained employment on Le Figaro, then under Cartier de Villemessant's energetic editorship, wrote two or three plays, and began to be recognized in literary communities as possessing distinction and promise. Morny, Napoleon III's all-powerful minister, appointed him to be one of his secretaries—a post which he held till Morny's death in

Literary career

In , Daudet's Lettres de mon moulin (Letters from My Windmill), written in Clamart, near Paris, and alluding to a windmill in Fontvieille, Provence, won the attention of many readers. The first of his longer books, Le Petit Chose (), did not, however, produce popular sensation. It is, in the main, the story of his own earlier years told with much grace and pathos. The year bro