Daudet, ALPHONSE, was born at Nîmes on May 13, 1840. His family had been in trade, but were not in good circumstances. He was, however, well educated at the Lyons Lycée, and was able when quite a boy to take the place of usher in a school at Alais, an employment of which, in Le Petit Chose and others of his works, he has given no cheerful reminiscences. He was only seventeen when, giving up his ushership, he set out for Paris with his elder brother, Ernest, who himself became a journalist and novelist of some mark. Alphonse (as also did Ernest) obtained an appointment as clerk or private secretary in the office of the Duke de Morny, of whom he has drawn a famous portrait in Le Nabab. Indeed, one of the main characteristics of M. Daudet's method, and one of the main reasons of his popularity with some, and his unpopularity with other readers, is the manner in which he seems to have utilised almost every circumstance and almost every acquaintanceship of his life in his books. M. Daudet's literary efforts, however, began with poetry; and his first book, in 1858, was entitled Les Amoureuses. He also devoted some not too successful years of experiment to theatrical work, writing by himself, or with a collaborator, La Dernière Idole (1862), L'Éclat Blanc (1865), Le Frère Aîné (1868), Le Sacrifice (1869), Lisc Tavernier, and L'Arlésienne (1872), pieces of which the earlier were more successful than the later. Besides this, he contributed to many journals, especially the Figaro. In this form appeared some of his best work, the Lettres de Mon Moulin (collected 1869), Robert Helmont (1871), the Contes du Lundi, and others; and it was in these years that he conceived the charming extravaganza of Tartarin de Tarascon, a most amusing satire on the characteristics of the natives of the south of France (1874), which he followed up with Tartarin sur les Alpes (1886) and Port Tarascon (1890).
It was not, however, till many years after his literary beginnings that M. Daudet hit on the style which has made him popular and famous. He had sketched something of the kind early in Le Petit Chose, a book full of pathos and of reminis- cences of his own early struggles. This pathetic quality is still further developed in Jack (1873), the story of an illegitimate child, part of the interest of which turns on the half-malicious sketches of certain literary Bohemians; and in Fromont Jeune et Risler Aîné (1874), where the devotion of a man of business to his firm, his wife, and his brother, meets in all three cases with an equally evil return. These have been followed by Le Nabab (1877), a transparent caricature of Morny and other well-known personages under the empire; Les Rois en Exil (1879), the chief parts in which are supposed to have been played also by actual persons; Numa Roumestan (1882), the hero of which was supposed to have some resemblance to Gambetta, and which at any rate is as remarkable in the serious way as Tartarin in the comic amongst satires on the 'meridional' type; L'Évangéliste (1883), in which the then new craze of the Salvation Army was introduced; Sapho (1884), a book somewhat out of M. Daudet's usual line, in which the mutual infatuation of a young man and a courtesan and artist's model is drawn with remarkable if not very wholesome power; and L'Immortel (1888), in which all the author's powers of ridicule, and all his practised skill in attacking individuals under a thin disguise, are employed to throw discredit on the French Academy. The vigour, and within certain limits, the versatility, of this series of novels is not denied by any one; but in addition to the personality already noticed, there has been charged against the earlier ones at least a following of Dickens, which can hardly be accidental, though it has been asserted to be so.
M. Daudet married early a lady of talent, who rendered him much assistance in his literary work, and he formed for some time part of a coterie of remarkable literary characters, which included the Russian novelist Turgenief, Gustave Flaubert, the brothers Goncourt, and M. Zola. He published autobiographic papers, collected as Trente Ans de Paris (1887), and Souvenirs d'un Homme de Lettres (1889). Long a sufferer from locomotor ataxy, he died 16th December 1897. See R. H. Sherard's Daudet (1894) and the Memoir by his son, Léon (Eng. trans. 1898), who is also a novelist.