Alphonse Daudet (13 May 1840 – 16 December 1897) was a French novelist. He was the father of Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet. lphonse Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the bourgeoisie. The 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 1856 he left Lyon, where his schooldays had been mainly spent, and began life as a schoolteacher at Alès, Gard, in the south of France. The position proved to be intolerable. As Dickens declared that all through his prosperous career he was haunted in dreams by the miseries of his apprenticeship to the blacking business, so Daudet says that for months after leaving Alès he would wake with horror, thinking he was still among his unruly pupils. On 1 November 1857, he abandoned teaching and took refuge with his brother Ernest Daudet, only some 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 (1858), 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, among those interested in literature, as possessing individuality 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 1865 — and showed Daudet no small kindness. Daudet had put his foot on the road to fortune. From Wikipedia
Here's another French book that my well-meaning instructors bestowed upon me but that I was not prepared for. It was a slow, grinding read... I remember more clearly my struggles with the language than the actual plot. Basically, a man with big dreams goes to North Africa (Morocco?). While his friends and neighbors laugh at his ambitions, Tartarin becomes a sort of hero, an adventurer. For all that, I didn't much like the protagonist; he was too much the buffoon (but I suppose that was the point).
Do You like book Tartarin Of Tarascon (2006)?
We all know the type: That guy who's "done things." Been to Africa. Been to the Arctic. Walked all the way to the top of the Empire State Building.That's Tartarin Tarascon.He'a s small-town type, speaking in the patois of the south of France, who goes mountain-climbing in Switzerland in order to show off to his buddies. While there, he falls in love with a Russian nihlist on the lam after she and her group tried to kill the czar. He proposes marriage. She leaves for Moscow, and he doesn't have the courage to follow.More hijinx ensue.A fun read -- full of the typical speech I remember from my time in southern France. A good story, well-told.
—MisterFweem
