Background

Léon Daudet was born as Alphonse Marie Vincent Léon Daudet on November 16, 1867, in Paris, France. He was the son of Alphonse Daudet, a French author, and Julia Allard, a poet and journalist. Léon had a brother Lucien Daudet.

Education

Daudet studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Daudet also studied medicine as a college student, but due to his political leanings changed to journalism.

Career

In 1899, Daudet began working as a reporter of the Royalists' daily L'Action française, on which he collaborated with the political writer Charles Maurras. He became its editor in 1908. For the rest of his life, Daudet contributed to it in some capacity. Although he wrote about politics for most of his life, Daudet's public service was limited to five years in the Chamber of Deputies, where he represented a Parisian constituency from 1919 to 1924. Daudet was exiled once to Belgium for his political beliefs.

His first novel, L'Astre Noir (1893; "The Black Heavenly Body"), was followed by a scathing indictment of the medical profession, Les Morticoles (1894). Among Daudet's other works, the most important are L'Avant-Guerre (1913; "Before the War"), which shows prescience as well as conservatism; Le Monde des Images (1919; "The World of Images"), a stubbornly anti-Freudian work on psychology; and Le Stupide XIXe Siècle (1922; The Stupid XIXth Century), a violent condemnation of the false gods worshiped in France after 1789. Daudet's six volumes of memoirs, Souvenirs des Milieux Littéraires, Politiques, Artistiques, et Médicaux (1914-1921; selection translated in Memoirs of Léon Daudet), are informative, vivid, and partisan. He also wrote a critical work, Mes Idées Esthétiques (1939).

Several works were translated into English, including Cloudy Trophy: The Romance of Victor Hugo and Clemenceau: A Stormy Life. Cloudy Trophy is a somewhat fictionalized rendering of Victor Hugo's life.

Achievements

• Alphonse Marie Vincent Léon Daudet, a French author, journalist, and politician, is best remembered for his right-wing political beliefs and his many works, which include his notable Etudes et Milieux Littéraires and Flambeaux: Rabelais, Montaigne, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire. His other most notable works include novel Le Voyage de Shakespeare (1896).
  
  Having been a political journalist for right-wing newspapers since 1894, Daudet was instrumental in the founding of the Royalists' newspaper L'Action française.
  
  Daudet's major journalistic achievement began in 1908, when he and Charles Maurras refashioned L'Action française into a daily paper of avowedly reactionary, nationalist, and royalist opinion. It's also worth noting, that Daudet published an antirepublican satire, Le Pays des Partementeurs, in 1901, and his contributions to L'Action française showed the same satirical and Rabelaisian flavour.

Works

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  • Hors du Joug Allemand, Mesures d'Après-Guerre 1915
  • Memoirs of Léon Daudet 1925
  • La Guerre Totale 1918
  • Le Stupide XIXe Siècle 1922
  • L'Hécatombe 1923
  • Le Balcon de l'Europe, Nouvelles Impressions Hollandaises 1928
  • Souvenirs et Polémiques 1992
  • Flambeaux: Rabelais, Montaigne, Hugo, Baudelaire 1929
  • L'Entre-Deux-Guerres 1915
  • Le Voyage de Shakespeare 1969

Politics

Daudet appeared in the public eye when he avidly followed a political party called the Royalists. Central to its platform was restoring the monarchy to France.

Besides, Daudet was a supporter of the Vichy administration headed by Marshal Pétain.

Personality

Daudet was the most virulent and bitterly satirical polemicist of his generation in France, whose literary reputation rests largely upon his journalistic work and his vivid memoirs.

Connections

In 1891, Léon Daudet married Jeanne Hugo. Later the couple divorced and Daudet married his cousin, Marthe Marie Julia Alphonsine Allard, also a monarchist, in 1903. Daudet had four children: Victor Alphonse Léon Daudet, Philippe Daudet, Claire Daudet and François Daudet.

Father:

Alphonse Daudet

(13 May 1840 - 16 December 1897)

Alphonse Daudet was a French author.

Mother:

Julia (Allard) Daudet

(13 July 1844 - 23 April 1940)

Julia (Allard) Daudet was a French writer, poet and journalist.

ex-wife:

Jeanne Hugo

(29 September 1869 - 30 November 1941)

Léopoldine Clémence Adèle Lucie Jeanne Hugo was a Belgian-born French heiress and socialite during La Belle Époque.

Brother:

Lucien Daudet

(11 June 1878 - 16 November 1946)

Wife:

Marthe Marie Julia Alphonsine Allard

Son:

Victor Alphonse Léon Daudet

(1892 - 1960)

Son:

Philippe Daudet

(1909 - 1923)

Daughter:

Claire Daudet

1918 - 1969

Son:

François Daudet

colleague:

Charles Maurras

(20 April 1868 - 16 November 1952)

Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a French author, politician, poet, and critic.

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series (Volume 217) brings researchers the most recent data on the world's most popular authors.
  2011