Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant was a French writer born in 1850 in France to a prosperous bourgeois family. He befriended Gustave Flaubert as a young man and showed talent as a student. Maupassant is considered one of the founders of the modern short story genre. Some of his most famous works include the short story collections La Maison Tellier and Bel Ami, both of which sold tens of thousands of copies shortly after their publication in the 1880s. He is renowned for his clever plots and influenced many other writers through his mastery of the short story form.

1. FRENCH WRITER
MAUPASSANT

3. • Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant was
born on August 5, 1850 at the Château de
Miromesnil (Castle Miromesnil, near Dieppe in
the Seine-Inférieure (now Seine-Maritime)
department in France.

4. • He was the first son of Laure Le Poittevin and
Gustave de Maupassant, both from
prosperous bourgeois families. When
Maupassant was 11 and his brother Hervé was
five, his mother, an independent-minded
woman, risked social disgrace to obtain a legal
separation from her husband.

5. • In 1867, as he entered junior high school,
Maupassant made acquaintance with Gustave
Flaubert at Croisset at the insistence of his
mother.[6]Next year, in autumn, he was sent to
the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen[7] where he
proved a good scholar indulging in poetry and
taking a prominent part in theatricals.
• In October 1868, at the age of 18, he saved the
famous poet Algernon Charles Swinburne from
drowning off the coast of Étretat.[8]

8. • In 1881 he published his first volume of short
stories under the title of La Maison Tellier; it
reached its twelfth edition within two years.
• In 1883 he finished his first novel, Une
Vie (translated into English as A Woman's Life),
25,000 copies of which were sold in less than a
year.
• His second novel Bel Ami, which came out in
1885, had thirty-seven printings in four months.

9. • Bei Ami

10. • Maupassant is considered one of the fathers
of the modern short story. He delighted in
clever plotting, and served as a model
for Somerset Maugham and O. Henry in this
respect.
• His stories about expensive jewellery ("The
Necklace", "La parure") are imitated with a
twist by Maugham ("Mr Know-All", "A String
of Beads") and Henry James ("Paste").