MAUPASSANT, Henri Rene Albert Guy de, On-re re-nA 5.1-bar go de mo-pa-san, French novelist: b. Chateau Seine-Inferi eure, France, 5 Aug. 1850; d. Parts, 6 July 1893. He began his career as a clerk in the Navy Department in Paris and also served for a time in the French army during the Franco-Prussian War. The novelist Flaubert, a friend of his mother's, was his godfather, and the youth took him as his model in the art of composition. After years of practice, during which he wrote and destroyed a great number of manuscripts, he allowed a short story, 'Boule de Suif,' to appear in 1880, a work which displayed the greatest finish and at the same time allied him to the naturalistic school of fiction. In the same year he published a book of verse, 'Des Vers,) and a drama, (Histoire du vieux Temns.' After this he continued to cultivate the short story and was very soon recognized as one of the greatest writers of short stories the 19th century had seen. In spite of the perfection of art displayed in their construction neither his brief tales nor his novels form pleasant reading. They compel admiration. but they are dominated by pessimism and in his later work the traces of an unbalanced mind may be plainly seen. In 1890 De Maupassant's mental malady occa sioned the cessation of literary occupation, two years later he became wholly insane and he died the next year in an asylum. His collec tions of short stories include 'La Maison Tel lieto (1881) ; 'Mlle. Fifi' (1883) ; 'Les Sceurs
Rondoli) (1884) ; (1884) ; (Contes du Jour et de la Nuit' (1885) ; et Non velles' (1885) ; 'La Horla' (1887) ; petite Roque) (1888) ; 'La Main gauche' (1889) ; Pere Milon) ; (L'inutile Beaute' (1890), etc. The finest of his six novels is Pierre et Jean' (1888) ; the others are (Une Vie' (1883; (Bel Arni' (1885) ; Oriol' (1887) ; comme la Mort) (1889) ; 'Notre Cceur' (1890). He also published several collections of travel sketches, such as Soleil) (1884) ; (Sur l'Eau' (1888) ; 'La Vie errante' (1890). A collection of 13 of his short stories published in English with the title, 'The Odd Number,' represents him at his best, both in point of art and as regards the stories themselves. The ab sence of a moral sense is less apparent here than elsewhere and there is less of gloom and animalism perceptible. Consult com pletes de Guy de Maupassant' (29 vols., Paris 190B-10) ; of Guy de Maupassant) (9 vols., New York 1910) ; Brunetiere, Ferdinand, (Le roman naturalist& (Paris 1883); Downie, Rene, d'aujourd'hui' (ib. 1894) ; Bashkirtseff, Marie, (Further Memoirs) (Lon don 1901) ; Symons, Arthur, (Studies in Prose and Verse) (New York 1904) ; Mahn, P., (Guy de Maupassant, sein Leben and seine Werke' (Berlin 1908); Matthews, Brander, and Opinions) (New York 1907).