Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant was a famous French writer from a realism era. He was born on August 5, 1850. in France, but he came from old Loren family, whose origin is from Normandy. Guy was raised mostly by his mother, considering she was separated from her's husband. She had the biggest influence on Guy's writing since he was a little boy. She had an exquisite taste in Literature, and she passed it on her children. Guy grew up in a small fishermen's village, where he spent his time with fishermen and talked to them in their dialect.

As a boy, Guy went to seminary to get his education, but he did whatever he can to get expelled, so he can be sent back to his mother. This is probably the part of his life that gave him an aversion to religion. After seminary, Guy was sent to a Lyceum to become an actor and a poet. After college, he went to an army to fight in Franco-Prussian War. After the war, he left Normandy and moved to Paris. He worked there as a marine officer for ten years.

At that time, their family friend, Gustav Flober, became Guy's teacher and personal guide in his writing evolvent. Guy started to gain his journalist's ambitions, too. Flober introduced Guy to Emile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, and many more important writers from realism and naturalism era. At that time, Guy started to write fiction himself, mostly short plays and poems.

Very soon Guy became an editor of many important magazines and newspapers of that time. He started to write short stories and novels. In 1880. he published a collection of his short stories named "Boule de suif". Flobert said the book wasn't just Guy's personal masterpiece, it's also a masterpiece of a world's literature. The book became very famous in very short time.

Guy's second book of short stories wars released in 1881. It was a book named "The house of Tellies" and it gained 12 editions in two years. Next year, Guy finishes his first novel "One life", which was sold over 25,000 copies in less than a year. His second novel "Bel Ami", published in 1885., had seven editions in four months.

Guy was very well paid for his masterpieces. He loved his solitude, but also he traveled a lot. He traveled around Europe, and Middle-East, and write during the journeys, so he would come back home with finished books. He socialized with a lot of important persons of his time, and he was a very respectable person in his community, but with years, he isolated himself more and more from society. He developed all kinds of phobia. He was scared somebody is stalking him, and that he'll become ill and die of syphilis that he get when he was young. With time, he lost his mind, and two years after that he died.

Guy de Maupassant died on July 6, 1893., not a long before his 43rd birthday. He was Buried in Paris.