MAUPASSANT, HENRI RENE ALBERT GUY DE (1850-1893), I rench novelist and poet, was born at the Château of Miromesnil (Seine-Inferieure) on Aug. 5, 185o. His grand father, a landed proprietor of a good Lorraine family, bequeathed a moderate fortune to his son, a Paris stockbroker, who married Mile. Laure Lepoitevin. Maupassant was educated at Yvetot and at the Rouen lycee. A copy of verses entitled Le Dieu createur, written during his year of philosophy, has been printed. He entered the ministry of marine, and was promoted to the Cabinet de l'Instruction publique, but legend says that, in a report by his chief, Maupassant is mentioned as not reaching the standard of the department in the matter of style. He divided his time between rowing expeditions and attending literary gatherings at the house of Gustave Flaubert, who was not, as he is often alleged to be, related to Maupassant but was merely an old friend of his mother. Maupassant seldom shared in the literary con versation, and upon those who met him—Turgenev, Alphonse Daudet, Catulle Mendes, Jose-Maria de Heredia and Zola—he left the impression of a simple young athlete. Even Flaubert, to whom he submitted some sketches, was not greatly struck by their talent, though he encouraged the youth to persevere.
Maupassant's first essay was a dramatic piece twice given at Etretat in 1873 before an audience which included Turgenev, Flaubert and Meilhac. In this indecorous performance, of which nothing more is heard, Maupassant played the part of a woman. During the next seven years he served a severe apprenticeship to Flaubert, and in 188o published a volume of poems, Des Vers, against which legal proceedings were taken and eventually with drawn, and Flaubert, who had himself been prosecuted for his first book, Madame Bovary, congratulated the poet on the sim ilarity between their literary experiences. Des Vers is an inter esting experiment, which shows Maupassant hesitating in his choice of a medium ; but he recognized that its chief deficiency— the absence of verbal melody—was fatal. Later in the year he
contributed to the Soirees de Medan, a collection of short stories by Zola, Huysmans and others, and in the Boule de suif revealed himself to his amazed collaborators and the public as an admi rable writer of prose and a consummate master of the conte, there by furnishing an instance, rare in literary history, of a writer beginning with a masterpiece. This success was quickly followed by La Maison Tellier (1881), which confirmed the first impression and vanquished even those who were repelled by the author's choice of subjects.
In Mademoiselle Fifi (1883) he repeated his previous triumphs as a conteur, and in the same year published Une Vie, his first work on a larger scale. In modern literature there is no finer example of cruel observation than this sad picture of an average woman undergoing the constant agony of disillusion, while the effect of extreme truthfulness which it conveys justifies its sub title—L'Humble verite. On account of certain passages the sale of the volume at railway bookstalls was forbidden in France, with the natural result of drawing attention to the book and of adver tising the Contes de la becasse (1883), a collection of stories as improper as they are clever. Au soleil (1884) a book of travels, was less read than Clair de lune, Miss Harriet, Les Soeurs Rondoli and Yvette, all published in 1883-1884 when Maupas sant's powers were at their highest; and the collections of 1885, Contes et nouvelles, Monsieur Parent, and Contes du jour at de la unit, show a falling off in style. To 1885 also belongs Bel-ami, the cynical history of a particularly detestable, brutal scoundrel who makes his way by means of his handsome face. Maupassant is here no less vivid in realizing his literary men, his financiers and frivolous women than in dealing with his favourite peasants, boors and servants, to whom he returned in Toine (1886) and in La Petite Rogue (1886).