Guy de Maupassant

Born in Normandy in 1850, he fell under the wing of Gustave Flaubert, who drilled him in ruthless economy until every word earned its place. "Boule de Suif" arrived in 1880 - a story of a prostitute and hypocrites on a carriage fleeing the Franco-Prussian War - and became his calling card. Over the next decade he produced 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and a volume of verse, most of it steeped in the naturalist school: disillusioned, pessimistic, unflinching about the social forces that grind ordinary people down. The war stories, drawn from the 1870s conflict, caught civilians crushed by events they never chose and could never escape. By the early 1890s syphilis had ravaged his nervous system; he died in an asylum in 1893, forty-three years old, the decade of brilliance over.