Hector Malot

Hector Malot abandoned law for journalism and wrote some seventy novels, but one outlived them all: Sans Famille, the story of a boy sold to a travelling showman, which became required reading for French schoolchildren and has never gone out of print. He wrote it for his daughter. Zola thought him a natural realist; Malot preferred the company of animals and the Normandy countryside he grew up in.