Stendhal's techniques of handling point of view and psychological portraiture are distinctive and have been much admired by critics and novelists.
During his lifetime Stendhal's works enjoyed much less popular success than those of contemporaries such as Eugène Sue, who is not considered very significant today, but they were well known to the cultured elite. Consequently he had a certain reputation in Paris salons, yet he did not derive a substantial income from his writing. Stendhal reflected that it was less desirable to have a wide following among his contemporaries than to appeal to readers in 1880 or 1935, and curiously, his choice of dates proved somewhat prophetic. Zola, in an essay first published in 1880, discussed Stendhal as one of his precursors (along with Balzac and Flaubert), and in 1882 an article by the novelist Paul Bourget, along with the influence of Hippolyte Taine's continuing enthusiasm, consolidated Stendhal's reputation in the French literary canon. By 1935 a growing critical industry of "Stendhaliens" had published a wealth of texts on and by their author. In his own time, however, Stendhal had to rely on work as a journalist, specialist in military supply, and French consul abroad to supplement income from publications and his father's estate.
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