Daudet, Alphonse, a noted French novelist of great versatility, born at Nîmes, of poor parents; early selected literature as his career in life; wrote poems and plays, and contributed to the Figaro and other journals; worked up into his novels characters and situations that had come under his own observation, often in too satirical a vein to become universally popular; has been likened to Dickens in his choice of subjects and style of treatment; died suddenly (1840‒1897).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
D'Aubusson, Pierre * D'Aulnoy, the Countess