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.
1927
Domaine de Lébioles 1/5, 4900 Spa, Belgium
Léon Daudet (in the center) with Madame de Lebioles passing through the Château de Lebioles during his exile in Belgium in 1927.
1935
4 Rue Corot, 75016 Paris, France
After the funeral ceremony for the leader of the Camelots du Roy, Charles Maurras and Léon Daudet walk out of Notre-Dame d'Auteuil church, in Paris, France on February 7, 1935.
1936
Noyon, Oise, France
French writer Léon Daudet during a meeting of the French Action on Mont Renaud, in 1936, in Noyon, Oise, France.
Léon Daudet
Léon Daudet
123 Rue Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris, France
Daudet studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand.
Léon Daudet
Léon Daudet
Léon Daudet
Léon Daudet
critic editor journalist novelist politician
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.