Maupassant's Short Stories

Guy de Maupassant was a prolific and very famous writer in his own lifetime. Between 1880 and 1891 for instance he wrote about 300 short stories, 200 articles, six novels, two plays, and three travel books. He wrote in the heyday of the short story, and it is this literary form for which he is now best remembered. Maupassant was one of the late nineteenth-century writers shaping what was to become the modern short story. His contribution to the genre was to pare down the means of expression and to focus on the effect of the tale. His stories are not abbreviated novels or rambling prose poems. They tell a story - and often it has a sting in the tail. Like other French writers of the late nineteenth century he was keen to explore ordinary everyday life - often exposing its less appetising and even grim features... Read more >>

more SHORT STORIES