THE WORLD'S

GREATEST

BOOKS

JOINT EDITORS

ARTHUR MEE

Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge

J. A. HAMMERTON

Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia

VOL. III

FICTION

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