Les lettres de mon moulin

First collected in 1869, Alphonse Daudet's Lettres de mon moulin ("Letters from My Windmill") is one of the best-loved works of nineteenth-century French literature: a garland of short tales and sketches written as if dispatched from a disused windmill in the sun-baked hills of Provence.

By turns tender, comic and quietly melancholy, the stories conjure the people and landscapes of the Midi — a stubborn goat who would rather face the wolf than live tethered, a miller defending the last honest windmill against the steam mills, a village priest bargaining over hasty Christmas masses, a shepherd keeping watch beneath the stars. Daudet writes with warmth, irony and a keen ear for regional life, blending folklore and observation into something wholly his own.

Charming and enduring, Letters from My Windmill remains a luminous portrait of Provence and a classic of the short-story form, cherished by readers of all ages.