Summary: Alphonse Allais (20 October 1854 – 28 October 1905) was a French writer and humorist, who was born in Honfleur, Calvados, and who died in Paris. He is the author of many collections of whimsical writings. A poet as much as a humorist, he cultivated the verse form known as holorhyme,. Allais wrote the earliest known example of a completely silent musical composition. His Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Great Deaf Man of 1897 consists of twenty-four blank measures. It predates similarly silent but intellectually serious works by John Cage and Erwin Schulhoff by many years. His prose piece "Story for Sara" was translated and illustrated by Edward Gorey.

Books of Alphonse Allais