DAUDET, LEON ), French man of letters and politician, born in Paris Nov. 16, 1867, son of Alphonse Daudet (q.v.) He married a granddaughter of Victor Hugo, whom he subsequently divorced. His violent opposition to the Govern ment permitted him to display his talents as a controversialist. He wrote for Le Gaulois and Le Figaro, and also for La Libre Parole, a violently anti-semitic paper, in the columns of which he was able to give full vent to his fiery temperament. Influenced by the writer, Charles Maurras, he adopted the doctrines of neo-royalism. At the time of the Dreyfus case, through the generosity of Madame de Loynes, the royalist paper, Action Francaise, was founded in 1899, afterwards appearing as a daily newspaper in 1908. The lucidity and force of his literary style, the wealth of his invective, often highly-coloured, combined to make him read and feared for 20 years. He was elected to the Chamber as a deputy for Paris in 1919, but was defeated in 1924. With the establish ment of peace his influence declined. In the summer of 1925 the death of his young son, Philippe, caused a great sensation. The finding of the judicial enquiry was that he had committed suicide, but Leon Daudet conducted a long and violent campaign to prove that he had, in fact, been murdered. He accused the chauffeur, in whose taxi his son had been found dead from a bullet wound, of complicity. The chauffeur prosecuted him, and Daudet was con demned to prison and ordered to pay heavy compensation. He was imprisoned in the Sante at Paris, from which he was rescued in 1927 by a ruse of some royalists, who made the governor of the prison believe he had been pardoned ; Daudet fled to Bel giu1.
The best of Daudet's novels are: L'astre noir Les Morticoles (1894) ; Le voyage de Shakespeare and Sylla et son destin (1922). Among his philosophical and controver sial works may be mentioned L'Heredo (1916) ; Le monde des images (1919) ; L'avant-guerre (1913) ; Le stupide XIXe siecle (1922); and Souvenirs (1914)