Book Description

Excerpt from Tartarin of Tarascon: Tartarin on the Alps Tartarin's creator was born under southern skies: Alphonse Daudet first saw the light at Nimes on 13th May 1840. After completing his secondary education at Lyons grammar school he took a post as usher in a school at Ales, an episode of his life which he afterwards described in Le Petit Chose. Later he moved to Paris and there published his book, a collection of verse entitled Les Amoureuses. From 1860 to 1865 he was secretary to the Duc de Morny. Daudet was now launched upon the world, and his youthful charm, his ardour, his friendliness made success inevitable. He embarked on a literary career and, under the powerful influence of Musset and Murger, threw in his lot with the Fantasist group. But the war of 1870 and his marriage soon developed his talent. He read Dickens and enjoyed the company of writers like Zola and, above all, Edmond de Goncourt; his understanding deepened, and he gained much in sincerity and authenticity. Though never deserving of the epithet "naturalistic," he devoted a great deal of attention to accuracy and documentation; so that his best novels (Le Nabab, Numa Roumestan, Sapho) are notable for their felicitous combination of historical fact with poetry. This, together with the fact that Daudet never succumbed to the lure of sentimentality or hypersensitiveness, renders those works both interesting documents of the period and evidences of a rare personal sensibility. It is probably this admixture of opposites which has assured his popularity with a large and faithful public both in France and elsewhere. He died on 16th December 1897. Amid Daudet's vast and varied output the story of Tartarin occupies a unique place. Fundamentally, of course, it is akin to his other "southern" works (Lettres de mon Moulin, Numa Roumestan), but its roots are to be found neither in the conte nor in the roman des m urs: it is more like a kind of lyric farce or some huge heroi-comic fresco, which does not quite manage to sustain the warmth of imagination and impetuosity of its opening (Adventures of Tartarin of Tarascon) in the later episodes (Port-Tarascon, 1890; and even Tartarin on the Alps, 1885). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."