Read A Parisian Affair and Other Stories online

Chapters (37)

Introduction

Acknowledgements

I should like to acknowledge with gratitude permission by Editions Gallimard to use their Bibliothèue de la Pléiade edition of Maupassant: Contes et Nouvelles published in 1974.

I am very grateful to both Hilary Laurie, whose idea it was to produce a new selection of Maupassant short stories, and to Mark Treharne whose work is both an example and an inspiration, for guiding me into this hugely enjoyable project.

I have been helped throughout its development by a number of friends and colleagues without whom I would be lost, and who include: Marie-Thérèse and Tony Allen, Cara Chase, Catherine Hoskyns, Elsbeth Lindner, Shirin Rai, Sue Shaw, Helen Siebenmann and Jasper Snyder.

Others who have generously provided both practical and moral support and whom I warmly thank are Kate Astbury, Laura Barber, Paula Bartley, Hilary Bourdillon, Saskia Brown, Charlotte Brunsdon, David Carpanini, Jo Crozier, Jonathan Dudley, Fergus Durant, Janet Goodfellow, Barrie Hinksman, Jill Irving, Maryanne Izzard, Peter Larkin, Pauline Matarasso, Lajpat Rai, Douglas Smith, Jo Smithies, Ann Swarbrick, Alan Teuton and Raya Trofimowa.

Any errors of commission and omission remain my own.

Chronology

1850 Birth of Henry René Albert Guy de Maupassant on 5 August at Fécamp in Normandy.

1851 Coup d’état of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte who proclaims himself Napoléon III the following year. Beginning of Second Empire, background to many of Maupassant’s stories.

1856 Birth of Hervé, Maupassant’s brother.

1857 Publication of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, as a result of which each author is subject of prosecution for offences against public morals.

1859–60 Maupassant a pupil at the Lycée Imperial Napoléon in Paris. After effective separation of parents, he moves with mother and brother to Etretat, on the Channel coast.

1863 Legal separation of Maupassant’s parents. Salon des refusés in Paris shows work of Manet, Pisarro, Cézanne, et al. Maupassant attends Yvetot seminary.

1868 Expelled from hated Yvetot seminary. Enters lycée at Rouen. Flaubert and his friend the poet Louis Bouilhet take him under their wing.

1869 Moves to Paris to read law. Lives in same building as father at 2, rue Moncey.

1870 Outbreak of Franco-Prussian war. Called up and posted to Rouen. Defeat of the French at Sedan. Napoléon III taken prisoner. Fall of the Empire and proclamation of the Third Republic.

1871 Bombardment of Paris followed by Franco-Prussian armistice. Popular uprising of Paris Commune repressed with great savagery by Thiers government. Leaves army.

1872 Begins career as a clerk in various government ministries, beginning in Naval Administration.