"Jack", a novel about an illegitimate child, a martyr to his mother's selfishness, which followed in 1876, served only to deepen the same impression. Henceforward his career was that of a successful man of letters, mainly spent writing novels: "Le Nabab" (1877), "Les Rois en exil" (1879), "Numa Roumestan" (1881), "Sapho" (1884), "L'Immortel" (1888), and writing for the stage: reminiscing in "Trente ans de Paris" (1887) and "Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres" (1888). The late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing, who read numerous Daudet novels in the original French, bought "L'Immortel" in July 1888 and wrote in his diary that he "in the thought of reading it". On finishing it six days later, however, he wrote that he had "private doubts" about it. These works, with the three Tartarins - "Tartarin de Tarascon", "Tartarin sur les Alpes", "Port-Tarascon" - and the short stories, written for the most part before he had acquired fame and fortune, constitute his life work. Gissing subsequently wrote about the later work "La Petite Paroisse", published in 1895, was "a sad falling away from the old Daudet. No character that is a creation".