Carmen

PROSPER MÉRIMÉE Carmen Novelist, archaeologist, essayist, and in all three departments one of the greatest masters of French style of his century, Prosper Mérimée was born in Paris on September 23, 1803. The son of a painter, Mérimée was intended for the law, but at the age of twenty-two achieved fame as the author of a number of plays purporting to be translations from the Spanish. From that time until his death at Cannes on September 23, 1870, a brilliant series of plays, essays, novels, and historical and archaeological works poured from his fertile pen. Altogether he wrote about a score of tales, and it is on these and on his "Letters to an Unknown" that Mérimée's fame depends. His first story to win universal recognition was "Colombo," in 1830.