biography
| name: |
Maupassant, (Henri René Albert) Guy de
|
pronunciation:
[mohpasã]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1850–93)
|
| biography:
| Novelist, born probably at the Château de Miromesnil, Dieppe, NW France. He studied at Rouen, and spent his life in Normandy. After serving as a soldier and a government clerk, he took to writing, encouraged by Flaubert, a friend of his mother's, and joined the Naturalist group led by Zola. His stories range from the short tale to the full-length novel. His first success, Boule de suif (1880, Ball of Fat), a short story about a prostitute's life during the Franco-Prussian War, led to his being in great demand by newspapers. There followed about 300 stories and several novels, including Une Vie (1883, trans A Woman's Life), and the supposedly autobiographical Bel-Ami (1885). His stories ‘Le Horla’ (Hallucination) and ‘La Peur’ (Fear) describe madness and fear with a horrifying accuracy which foreshadows the insanity which beset Maupassant in 1892, when he was committed to an asylum in Paris. |
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