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Guy de Maupassant was a French novelist and short-story writer. He was born in 1850 at Fecamp in Normandy, France. His birth name was Henri Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant. De Maupassant was not a very studious young man. His law studies in Paris were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) where he had to work as a government office clerk. To distract himself from the monotonous office work, he swam, boated, seeked female companionship, and wrote. After the war, Maupassant became friends with Gustave Flaubert, a leading French writer of the time who introduced him to Parisian literary society. Soon his first story, "Boule de suif" (Ball of Fat), was published. He became an overnight celebrity and one of the best-selling authors in France. Within the next ten years, de Maupassant wrote over 300 stories, 200 newspaper articles, 6 novels, and 3 travel books. Usually the works were built around simple episodes from everyday life, which revealed the hidden sides of people. De Maupassant had contracted syphilis early on in his adult life. As he grew older, his mental state began to deteriorate. In 1892, he attempted suicide. As a result of this attempt, his mother committed him to a mental institution, where he died the next year.
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