5 August 1850: Guy de Maupassant is born

Writer, Guy de Maupassant really loved women, just like his father did. As a teenager, he wrote many amorous poems and even kept a ‘Don Juan Register’, a list of conquests. He shared his mistresses with other men, including his own father!

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born in Normandy on 5 August 1850. He was the first son of Gustave and Laure de Maupassant, both from prosperous bourgeois families. Maupassant is remembered as a master of the short story form who depicted human lives, destinies and social forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms.

Maupassant’s parents’ marriage was unhappy, and the couple separated when Guy was eleven years old. Laure managed to keep both her sons with her, and they lived in Étretat, a fishing and resort town. Maupassant was expelled from school for writing obscene verses and drinking the school communion wines. As a teenager he wrote many amorous poems and even kept a ‘Don Juan Register’, a list of conquests. Like his father, he was obsessed with women. Maupassant determined never to marry because of the unhappy marriage of his own parents.

Maupassant was a protégé of Gustave Flaubert and his stories are characterized by economy of style and efficient, seemingly effortless conclusions. Guy de Maupassant wrote over three hundred short stories, six novels, poems, travel books, articles, four plays and pornography, and was a hugely influential writer. He established the modern short story form and wrote stories which have been hard for others to equal in terms of quality, intriguing twists in the tail, and an almost photographic realism.

He could never explain his own literary ability and grew quite panic-stricken when asked about his gift, or even when others talked of literary matters in his presence. He didn’t want to analyse – just to represent and narrate.

My Reader’s Guide includes more details about Guy de Maupassant, his life, and one of his most famous short stories, The Necklace.