MCMX

Table of Contents

Daudet, Alphonse
  Tartarin of Tarascon

Day, Thomas
  Sandford and Merton

Defoe, Daniel
  Robinson Crusoe
  Captain Singleton

Dickens, Charles
  Barnaby Rudge
  Bleak House
  David Copperfield
  Dombey and Son
  Great Expectations
  Hard Times
  Little Dorrit
  Martin Chuzzlewit
  Nicholas Nickleby
  Oliver Twist
  Old Curiosity Shop
  Our Mutual Friend
  Pickwick Papers
  Tale of Two Cities

Disraeli, Benjamin (Earl of Beaconsfield)
  Coningsby
  Sybil, or The Two Nations
  Tancred, or The New Crusade

Dumas, Alexandre
  Marguerite de Valois
  Black Tulip
  Corsican Brothers
  Count of Monte Cristo
  The Three Musketeers
  Twenty Years After

A Complete Index of the world’s greatest books will be found at the end of Volume XX.

* * * * *

ALPHONSE DAUDET

Tartarin of Tarascon

      Alphonse Daudet, the celebrated French novelist, was born at
     Nimes on May 13, 1840, and as a youth of seventeen went to
     Paris, where he began as a poet at eighteen, and at twenty-two
     made his first efforts in the drama.  He soon found his feet as
     a contributor to the leading journals of the day and a
     successful writer for the stage.  He was thirty-two when he
     wrote “Tartarin of Tarascon,” than which no better comic tale
     has been produced in modern times.  Tarascon is a real town,
     not far from the birthplace of Daudet, and the people of the
     district have always had a reputation for “drawing the long
     bow.”  It was to satirise this amiable weakness of his southern
     compatriots that the novelist created the character of
     Tartarin, but while he makes us laugh at the absurd
     misadventures of the lion-hunter, it will be noticed how
     ingeniously he prevents our growing out of temper with him,
     how he contrives to keep a warm corner in our hearts for the
     bragging, simple-minded, good-natured fellow.  That is to say,
     it is a work of essential humour, and the lively style in
     which the story is told attracts us to it time and again with
     undiminished pleasure.  In two subsequent books, “Tartarin in
     the Alps,” and “Port Tarascon,” Daudet recounted further
     adventures of his delightful hero.  His “Sapho” and “Kings in
     Exile” have also been widely read.  Daudet died on December 17,
     1897.

I.—­The Mighty Hunter at Home