Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant was a French writer trained by Flaubert, a friend of his mother, who made him rewrite for seven years before allowing him to publish. Boule de Suif came out when he was thirty; a decade of ferocious productivity followed — some three hundred stories and six novels. Syphilis destroyed his mind; he tried to cut his throat and died in an asylum at forty-two.