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Léon Daudet (French:[dodɛ]; 16 November 1867 – 2 July 1942) was a French journalist, writer, an active
monarchist, and a member of the
Académie Goncourt.
Move to the right
Daudet was born in Paris. His father was the novelist
Alphonse Daudet, his mother was
Julia Daudet and his younger brother,
Lucien Daudet, would also become an artist. He was educated at the
Lycée Louis le Grand, and afterwards studied medicine, a profession which he abandoned.[1] Léon Daudet married
Jeanne Hugo, the granddaughter of
Victor Hugo, in 1891 and thus entered into the higher social and intellectual circles of the
French Third Republic. He divorced his wife in 1895 and became a vocal critic of the Republic, the
Dreyfusard camp, and of democracy in general.[2]
Together with
Charles Maurras (who remained a lifelong friend), he co-founded (1907) and was an editor of the nationalist,
integralist periodical Action Française. A
deputy from 1919 to 1924, he failed to win election as a
senator in 1927 – despite having gained prominence as the voice of the monarchists. When Maurras was released from prison after serving a sentence for verbally attacking Prime Minister
Léon Blum, Daudet[3] joined other political leaders
Xavier Vallat,
Darquier de Pellepoix, and
Philippe Henriot to welcome him in the
Vel' d'Hiv in July 1937.
Scandals and later life
When his son
Philippe was discovered fatally shot in 1923, Daudet accused the republican authorities of complicity with
anarchist activists in what he believed to be a murder, and lost a lawsuit for
defamation brought against him by the driver of the taxi in which Philippe's body was found. That same year,
Germaine Berton carried out an assassination against fellow Action Française writer
Marius Plateau. Daudet was also a target of this assassination but was not present at the time of the shooting.[4]
Condemned to five months in prison, Daudet fled and was exiled in Belgium, receiving a
pardon in 1930. In 1934, during the
Stavisky Affair, he was to denounce Prime Minister
Camille Chautemps, calling him the "leader of a gang of robbers and assassins". He also showed particular detestation for the subsequent Prime Minister
Léon Blum, candidate of a coalition of socialists and other parties of the left.
The Napus: The Great Plague of the Year 2227 (translated, annotated and introduced by
Brian Stableford, 2013).
The Bacchantes: A Dionysian Scientific Romance (translated, annotated and introduced by
Brian Stableford, 2013).
Selected articles
"The Overthrow of German Military Prestige," The Living Age, Vol. 302 (1919).
"The Stupid Nineteenth Century," The Living Age, Vol. 312 (1922).
"Sulla and His Destiny," The Living Age, Vol. 315 (1922).
"Maeterlinck's Book on Ants," The Living Age, Vol. 339 (1930).
"My Father Alphonse," The Living Age, Vol. 339 (1930).
References
^"Daudet, Léon." In: Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. XXX. London: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company, 1922, p. 808 ***Please note that a wikilink to the article in EB1922 entitled [Daudet, Léon] is not available*** .
Griggs, Arthur Kingsland (1925). Memoirs of Leon Daudet. New York: The Dial Press.
Guillou, Robert (1918). Leon Daudet, son Caractère, ses Romans, sa Politique. Paris: Société d'Éditions Levé.
Kershaw, Alister (1988). An Introduction to Léon Daudet, with Selections from His Writings. Francestown, New Hampshire: Typographeum Press
ISBN0-930126-23-8.
Leeds, Stanton B. (1940).
"Daudet and Reaction." In: These Rule France. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, pp. 236–247.
Weber, Eugen (1962). Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press
ISBN0-8047-0134-2.
External links
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