In 1871, he left Normandy and moved to Paris, where he spent ten years as a clerk in the Navy Department. The Franco-Prussian War broke out soon after his graduation from college in 1870 he enlisted as a volunteer. In October 1868, at the age of 18, he saved the famous poet Algernon Charles Swinburne from drowning off the coast of Étretat. Next year, in autumn, he was sent to the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen where he proved a good scholar, indulging in poetry and taking a prominent part in theatricals. In 1867, as he entered junior high school, Maupassant met Gustave Flaubert at Croisset at the insistence of his mother. Finding the place unbearable, he finally got himself expelled in his penultimate year. From his early education he retained a marked hostility to religion, and to judge from verses composed around this time he deplored the ecclesiastical atmosphere, its ritual and discipline. When Guy reached the age of thirteen, his mother placed her two sons as day boarders in a private school, the Institution Leroy-Petit, in Rouen-the Institution Robineau of Maupassant's story La Question du Latin-for classical studies. At the Villa des Verguies, between the sea and the luxuriant countryside, he grew very fond of fishing and of outdoor activities. Until the age of thirteen, Guy lived happily with his mother, at Étretat in Normandy. She was an exceptionally well-read woman and was very fond of classical literature, particularly Shakespeare. In the absence of the father, Maupassant's mother became the most influential figure in the young boy's life. 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, who was violent towards her.Īfter the separation, Laure Le Poittevin kept her two sons. He then obtained from the Tribunal Civil of Rouen by decree dated 9 July 1846 the right to style himself 'de Maupassant' instead of 'Maupassant', and this was his surname at the birth of his son Guy in 1850. Gustave discovered a certain Jean-Baptiste Maupassant, conseiller-secrétaire to the King, who had been ennobled in 1752. His mother urged her husband when they married in 1846 to obtain the right to use the particule or form 'de Maupassant' instead of 'Maupassant' as his family name, in order to indicate noble birth. Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant, born on 5 August 1850 at the late 16th-century Château de Miromesnil (near Dieppe in the Seine-Inférieure (now Seine-Maritime) department in France), was the first son of Laure Le Poittevin and Gustave de Maupassant, who both came from prosperous bourgeois families. His father, Gustave de Maupassant, by Hippolyte Bellangé His first published story, ' Boule de Suif' ('The Dumpling', 1880), is often considered his most famous work.

He wrote 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse. Many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, describing the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught up in events beyond their control, are permanently changed by their experiences.

Maupassant was a protégé of Gustave Flaubert and his stories are characterized by economy of style and efficient, seemingly effortless dénouements. Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant ( UK: / ˈ m oʊ p æ s ɒ̃/, US: / ˈ m oʊ p ə s ɒ n t, ˌ m oʊ p ə ˈ s ɒ̃/ French: 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, as well as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives, destinies and social forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms.

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