Alphonse Daudet

Alphonse Daudet was a French author who lived from May 13, 1840, to December 16, 1897. He was married to Julia Daudet and had three children, Angélique, Léon, and Lucien. He was born in Nimes, France. Both sides of his family were from the upper class. Vincent Daudet, his father, was a silk maker. He had a lot of bad luck and failed in life. Alphonse had a sad childhood because he skipped school a lot. He started his job as a teacher in 1856 at Alès, Gard, in the south of France. He had spent most of his school years in Lyon. The job turned out to be unbearable, and Daudet later said that for months after he left Alès, he would wake up scared, thinking he was still with his bad students. His book Le Petit Chose was based on these and other events in his life. He quit teaching on November 1, 1857, and went to live with his younger brother Ernest Daudet, who was trying "and thereto soberly" to make a living as a writer in Paris. Ernest was only three years older than him. He started writing songs, which were put together in a small book called Les Amoureuses (1858) and did pretty well.