Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant, universally acknowledged as a father of the modern short story, is celebrated for his clever plotting. Born in Normandy, he was the protégé of Flaubert, who guided his debut. His first story, “Boule de Suif” (1880), was characterized as a masterpiece, and he continued to write methodically, producing two to four volumes of stories a year, as well as his greatest novel, Pierre et Jean. Wealthy and celebrated, he contracted syphilis and was diagnosed insane in 1891. Maupassant died in 1893, short of his forty-third birthday, having penned his own epitaph: “I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.”