The works of the French author Stendhal (1783-1842) mark the transition in France from romanticism to realism. His masterpieces--The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma--provide incisive and ironic depictions of love and the will to power.

Stendhal was born Marie Henri Beyle on Jan. 23, 1783, in Grenoble. He was thus a child of the 18th century who lived well into the 19th. He early developed a dislike for his father and an undue attachment to his mother. She died when he was 7 years old. Stendhal soon displayed the customary pattern that develops from such emotional situations: a hatred for authority and a search for a surrogate mother.

Early Training and Career

Stendhal's schooling was under the Ideologues, a group of 18th-century investigators of psychology, a training that set him apart from the later romantic authors. From this schooling, as well as from an intensive...