Guy de Maupassant (1850 - 1893)

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Guy de Maupassant was born Henry-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant in Normandy, France. He abandoned his studies in law to serve as a soldier in the Franco Prussian War, and his experiences in the war served as fodder for his fiction. His greatest literary influence was Gustave Flaubert, who was both a mentor and father figure. Talented and charismatic, he developed a reputation as a womanizer and infamously had a special annex in his apartment to meet with women. Maupassant was institutionalized after a failed suicide attempt and died the next year at the age of 42.

Unlike many authors, Maupassant was enormously successful in his own time and recognized as one of the major contributors to the short story form. Along with his contemporaries, Maupassant pioneered the genre of literary Naturalism. His fiction often surfaces socioeconomic class inequalities and targets the French bourgeois as objects of ridicule. Encouraged by his success but troubled by illness and depression, Maupassant was called by his friend Emile Zola “the happiest and unhappiest of men.” His fiction explores human sexuality, socioeconomic class, mental illness, and the macabre through the development of characters as charismatic and complicated as their creator.