Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant was born to a wealthy family in Tourville-sur-Arques, France, in 1850. Maupassant demonstrated an early interest in literature as a high school student in Rouen, where he began writing poetry and acted in several plays. In 1867, he was introduced to the prominent French novelist Gustave Flaubert, who took the young Maupassant under his wing and encouraged him to study law in Paris. His education was interrupted by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, during which time Maupassant served as an officer in the artillery corps. After the war, Maupassant returned to Paris where Flaubert introduced him to other important novelists in the realist and naturalist schools, including Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, and Edmond de Goncourt. It was also during this period that Maupassant began his career as a journalist, devoting his spare time to writing novels and short stories. In 1880 Maupassant published his first masterpiece, “Boule de suif,” a short story inspired by his involvement in the Franco-Prussian war that catapulted the young author into literary celebrity. Over the next ten years Maupassant wrote prodigiously, earning wealth for himself and admiration from his contemporaries: Leo Tolstoy called Maupassant’s first novel One Life “the best French novel since [Victor] Hugo’s Les Misérables.” Maupassant was especially well-known for his short stories, which were notable for their pessimistic take on human and social life. In his later years Maupassant began to suffer from extreme paranoia and other health complications, probably due to the syphilis that he had contracted in youth. After a failed suicide attempt in 1892, he was committed to an asylum in Paris where he died in 1893.