Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) is the most celebrated of French short-story writers. The brilliance of his technique is combined with an ethical nihilism.

Guy de Maupassant was born on Aug. 5, 1850, in Normandy; his exact birthplace has never been established. His father, a libertine with a roving disposition, and his mother were legally separated when Guy was still a boy, and he spent a carefree adolescence under the indulgent surveillance of his cultivated mother. When he reached man's estate, the place of his father was to some extent taken by the novelist Gustave Flaubert, who had been a close friend of Madame de Maupassant for many years.

Under Flaubert's tutelage, the young Maupassant underwent a strict course of training in the craft of literature, at the same time as he was earning his living in the civil service. He became known to members of the...