Stamp of Daudet's Windmill at Fontvieille, France

Le Moulin d'Alphonse Daudet is as important to the French as the windmills of Cervantes' Don Quixote are to the Spanish. Daudet published Les Lettres de Mon Moulin or Letters from My Mill in 1870. The book, a series of fictional vignettes set in Daudet's native Provence, didn't immediately win Parisian attention, leading Daudet to buy some of the first impression as souvenirs because sales were so slow. But eventually the stories won French hearts, and they have now become an essential part of French cultural heritage. The windmill at Fontvieille in the Bouches-du-Rhone departement northeast of Arles was moved to the site by friends of Daudet's after his death. The tower windmill is typical of those found throughout southern France. Unlike windmills in northern Europe, those of southern France use a sharply peaked conical cap and blades with sails of equal dimensions on either side of the stock or blade spar.

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