Guy de Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant, (1850-93). French short-story writer and novelist. During a ten-year period as a clerk in the civil service, he was encouraged and supervised in his writing by Flaubert, who was a family friend. Maupassant’s first published story, ‘Ball of Fat’, brought him instant fame in 1880. His volumes of stories include Mademoiselle Fifi (1882). He also six novels, notably Bel-Ami (1885), the story of a young man’s adventures in fashionable Parisian society, and The Two Brothers (1888). Maupassant suffered from a nervous illness, brought on by syphilis, and was committed to an asylum in 1892.
