Alphonse Daudet
ALPHONSE DAUDET was born in Nîmes in 1840. His writing career began, after an abortive attempt at schoolteaching, with a volume of poems in 1858, though it wasn’t until 1874 that he had a prominent success with Fromont Junior and Risler Senior, a novel. Many notable novels followed, of which the most famous is Sapho (1884). He also produced plays, books for children, and many classic short stories and sketches. He is now recognized as one of the great French writers of the nineteenth century. His two sons Léon and Lucien were also celebrated writers. Plagued by syphilis for much of his life, he died in Paris in 1897, at the age of 57.
