The Little Thing

Daudet, Alphonse, 1840-1897Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.3

Word count: 480K words
Chapters: 49

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Le petit chose by Alphonse DaudetAuthor: Daudet, Alphonse, 1840-1897,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Aug 22, 2004

Editor's review

Le petit chose is a semi-autobiographical novel by the French writer Alphonse Daudet, written in French and classified under French literature. Through the eyes of its young protagonist, it recounts his drifting experiences in boarding school, the workplace, and the lower reaches of society, written in Daudet's characteristic blend of warmth, irony, and sentiment. The novel offers detailed depiction of education and employment conditions in provincial nineteenth-century France, with vivid characterization and sincere emotion that never tips into sentimentality. For readers learning French or studying the nineteenth-century French novel, this book is an important entry point for understanding Daudet's narrative style and can also serve as advanced French reading material. The Project Gutenberg edition is freely accessible and searchable, but it is the original French text without modern annotations. Readers need a certain level of French reading ability to appreciate the language and period detail of the original.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Language learners with intermediate or higher French reading ability
Readers interested in nineteenth-century French literature and Daudet's works
Literature students studying the bildungsroman and semi-autobiographical narrative
Readers hoping to understand nineteenth-century provincial French life through fiction

Not a good fit for

Readers with no or only beginner-level French
Readers expecting light comedy or fast-paced plotting
Readers who need modern annotations and introductory guidance to understand the original text

Reading tips

Read one chapter first to gauge the language difficulty, then decide whether to pair it with a French-Chinese bilingual or annotated edition.
Keep a notebook for character relationships and period vocabulary to reduce interruptions while reading.
Focus on Daudet's shifts of tone between humor and sentiment; there is no need to look up every word.
After finishing, review the protagonist's growth arc and map out the novel's temporal and spatial structure.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What level of French does this book require?

Intermediate or higher French reading ability is recommended. Daudet's sentences are not especially difficult, but the book contains nineteenth-century provincial vocabulary, school-setting terms, and period expressions that can frequently trip up beginners. Reading it after some experience with French fiction makes for a much smoother experience.

Is this one of Daudet's major works?

Le petit chose is one of Daudet's better-known novels, with a clear semi-autobiographical cast, and is often used to discuss his coming-of-age narratives and writing about childhood experience. Its style is akin to his short stories, but it is longer and well suited to a systematic understanding of his fiction.

Does the Project Gutenberg edition include annotations?

This edition is a public-domain electronic text of the original French and generally contains no modern editorial annotations, introduction, or glossary. Readers who need background explanation can pair it with French literary history sources, a bilingual edition, or related introductory materials to better understand period detail.

Is it suitable as a text for French major courses?

It can serve as supplementary reading for literature courses in French majors, especially for discussing the nineteenth-century French novel, coming-of-age narrative, and semi-autobiographical writing. Teachers should provide background explanation and flag language difficulties, however, or students may be distracted by period vocabulary and narrative pacing.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Daudet, Alphonse, 1840-1897 Author

Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) was a French writer known for clear, brisk storytelling in a warm and slightly melancholy style. Forty of his works are held in this collection, including Lettres de mon moulin, Le petit chose, Tartarin de Tarascon and Le nabab. His writing often draws on the landscapes and customs of southern France, combining lively narration with concern for the fate of ordinary people, which gives it both readability and emotional depth. His works are categorized here as inspirational and coming-of-age, reflecting the lasting appeal of their themes of growth and struggle. Public information on the details of his life is limited, so no conjecture is offered here.