For one thing, Daudet was a rather prolific author, but the handful of works that are still kept in print today are not only a tiny fraction of his total output, but are far from being representative of his strongest qualities. Those who have read only a few of his sparkling tales of Provence would hardly suspect the truth that he was a major novelist of Parisian manners. A second reason for his current obscurity is that he was an exceptionally private person who left to posterity no extensive collection of notebooks, diaries, or correspondence from which the public could satisfy its curiosity about him or his work, as it can about Gustave Flaubert, for instance, or about George Sand. Finally, there is the fact that Daudet's best-known works are celebrated for their charm and their human warmth, but not for their profundity. Those who do not know his weightier and more provocative works find it all too easy to dismiss him as entertaining but trivial.
The fact of the matter is that Daudet was, to his contemporaries, a good deal more than "a fellow of infinite jest," like Hamlet's Yorick, or a regional author with a gift for amusing Parisians with the quaint foibles of his native Midi.
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