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The Greatest Writers of All Time #44
The Complete Short Stories Of Guy de Maupassant
The present ebook contains the complete short stories written by French author Guy de Maupassant in the chronological order of their original publication.
807 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 27, 2016
447 people are currently reading
297 people want to read
About the author
Guy de Maupassant
7,402 books3,017 followersHenri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by their economy of style and their efficient effortless dénouement. He also wrote six short novels. A number of his stories often denote the futility of war and the innocent civilians who get crushed in it - many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 6, 2024
Los cuentos de Maupassant son un clásico absolutamente imprescindible para los amantes del género. Este libro es un tocho de casi mil páginas y me ha asombrado la variedad de temas y la agilidad de la narración. Como en toda antología, hay cuentos mejores que otros, pero tengo que decir que no me he aburrido en ningún momento. Es como un fantástico viaje a la Francia del siglo XIX.
July 14, 2023
Guy de Maupassant's short stories encompasses provincial and the Parisian lifestyle in his usual dark and somber, so when reading this collection some stories seemed too romantic. Guy de Maupassant's stories are not inclined to make the women seem so honorable and more like the terrible and selfish sex, I was apprised of some stories not being Maupassant's and I included the authors and stories below that are not his. The reason for the mistake is doing to the translations done in English long ago and the sloppiness of confirming if it was truly a Maupassant. Richepin, Maizeroy and Sacher-Masoch are worthy of the read and many stories are more romantically and give the female sex not such a black eye, but not always. I wonder how many of his stories Vincent van Gogh read?
I reviewed all stories separately and all reviews that were not his under his name, since it was already placed with his name but clarify it on the review.
----Richepin--
+The Lancer’s Wife
+Ugly
+Julot’s Opinion
+The Man With the Dogs
+The Clown
+Babette
+Sympathy
+The Debt
+A Night in Whitechapel
+Countess Satan
+Kind Girls
+Profitable Business
+Violated
+Jeroboam
+The Marquis
+An Adventure in Paris
+The Man With the Blue Eyes
+La Morillonne
---Maizeroy---
+The Confession
+The Thief
+The Mountebanks
+The Sequel to a Divorce
+Mamma Stirling
+Lilie Lala
+The Bandmaster’s Sister
+False Alarm
+Wife and Mistress
+Mad
+An Unfortunate Likeness
+The New Sensation
+The Viaticum
+The Relics
+A Rupture
+A Useful House
+The Accent
+Margot’s Tapers
+Caught in the Very Act
+The Last Step
+The Hermaphrodite
+Under the Yoke
+The Upstart
+Happiness
+The Jennet
+The Old Maid
---Sacher-Masoch--
+Venus in Furs
+Ghosts
+Crash
+An Honest Deal
+Stable Perfume
+An Exotic Prince
+The Ill-Omened
+Virtue in the Ballet
+In His Sweetheart’s Livery
+Delila
+A Messalliance
+The Odalisque of Senichou
+A Good Match
+A Fashionable Woman
+The Carnival of Love
+A Deer in the Provinces
+The White Lady
+Caught
+The Venus of Branzia
I reviewed all stories separately and all reviews that were not his under his name, since it was already placed with his name but clarify it on the review.
----Richepin--
+The Lancer’s Wife
+Ugly
+Julot’s Opinion
+The Man With the Dogs
+The Clown
+Babette
+Sympathy
+The Debt
+A Night in Whitechapel
+Countess Satan
+Kind Girls
+Profitable Business
+Violated
+Jeroboam
+The Marquis
+An Adventure in Paris
+The Man With the Blue Eyes
+La Morillonne
---Maizeroy---
+The Confession
+The Thief
+The Mountebanks
+The Sequel to a Divorce
+Mamma Stirling
+Lilie Lala
+The Bandmaster’s Sister
+False Alarm
+Wife and Mistress
+Mad
+An Unfortunate Likeness
+The New Sensation
+The Viaticum
+The Relics
+A Rupture
+A Useful House
+The Accent
+Margot’s Tapers
+Caught in the Very Act
+The Last Step
+The Hermaphrodite
+Under the Yoke
+The Upstart
+Happiness
+The Jennet
+The Old Maid
---Sacher-Masoch--
+Venus in Furs
+Ghosts
+Crash
+An Honest Deal
+Stable Perfume
+An Exotic Prince
+The Ill-Omened
+Virtue in the Ballet
+In His Sweetheart’s Livery
+Delila
+A Messalliance
+The Odalisque of Senichou
+A Good Match
+A Fashionable Woman
+The Carnival of Love
+A Deer in the Provinces
+The White Lady
+Caught
+The Venus of Branzia
August 11, 2021
There are over ninety short stories in this 1941 edition; a testament to the claim that not only was this author one of the greatest short story writers of all time, but also one of the most prolific. De Maupassant’s tales take us back to the France of the late 19th century. His stories feature people in all walks of life; from prostitutes to wealthy businessmen, to soldiers of the Franco-Prussian war.
De Maupassant was apprenticed to the famous novelist, Flaubert. He was acquainted with Zola, Evan Turgenev, and other writers of the realist and naturalist schools of literature. Leo Tolstoy used De Maupassant as the subject in one of his essays on writing.
Included in this collection is his most famous short story, “Boule de Suif,” in which the hypocrisy of the upper class is contrasted with the generosity and compassion of those of the lower caste. In one of my favorite stories, entitled “Growing Old,” the narrator states: “Twelve years are such a little thing in a man’s existence! One scarcely feels them pass! They go one after another these years, gently and quickly, and leave so little trace behind them; they vanish so completely that in looking back over the time passed one cannot perceive anything and cannot comprehend how it is they have made him old.” This passage spoke to me, a man in his 7th decade, who has lost numerous friends and associates over the years.
A collection of stories this extensive is useful to those of us who tend to read novels or detailed non-fiction because the tales themselves are so brief that they offer a respite from heavier or deeper literature. In spite of their brevity most of these stories hold a gem of truth, and for that reason alone they are worth reading.
De Maupassant was apprenticed to the famous novelist, Flaubert. He was acquainted with Zola, Evan Turgenev, and other writers of the realist and naturalist schools of literature. Leo Tolstoy used De Maupassant as the subject in one of his essays on writing.
Included in this collection is his most famous short story, “Boule de Suif,” in which the hypocrisy of the upper class is contrasted with the generosity and compassion of those of the lower caste. In one of my favorite stories, entitled “Growing Old,” the narrator states: “Twelve years are such a little thing in a man’s existence! One scarcely feels them pass! They go one after another these years, gently and quickly, and leave so little trace behind them; they vanish so completely that in looking back over the time passed one cannot perceive anything and cannot comprehend how it is they have made him old.” This passage spoke to me, a man in his 7th decade, who has lost numerous friends and associates over the years.
A collection of stories this extensive is useful to those of us who tend to read novels or detailed non-fiction because the tales themselves are so brief that they offer a respite from heavier or deeper literature. In spite of their brevity most of these stories hold a gem of truth, and for that reason alone they are worth reading.
March 29, 2015
Historias que tocan casi todos los aspectos de la naturaleza humana… relatos que hablan de miseria, avaricia, crueldad, ambición, dolor, amor, traición, pasión, terror, infidelidades, alegrías y tristezas. Situaciones jocosas y divertidas se entremezclan con narraciones grotescas, perturbadoras e inquietantes.
June 4, 2020
The edition I have is 1987 Rupa & Co.
June 14, 2020
A great, but deliberately immoral writer often mischaracterized as "realistic".
Artful plots and twists abound, and the very 19th century flavour and incidents that populate many of the stories conjure an extinct France: the France before War traduced it and made a mockery of its dedication to infidelity and bourgeois dalliances. The men are nearly all bounders, the women victims that sometimes turn vengeful. Many of the stories have not aged well, and some will trigger huge protest as "politically incorrect" or worse, soft-core pornography.
As a method of learning French in side-by-side texts, it is worthy. An important book as regards short story form and authorship, it is nonetheless a difficult slog in English translations.
Artful plots and twists abound, and the very 19th century flavour and incidents that populate many of the stories conjure an extinct France: the France before War traduced it and made a mockery of its dedication to infidelity and bourgeois dalliances. The men are nearly all bounders, the women victims that sometimes turn vengeful. Many of the stories have not aged well, and some will trigger huge protest as "politically incorrect" or worse, soft-core pornography.
As a method of learning French in side-by-side texts, it is worthy. An important book as regards short story form and authorship, it is nonetheless a difficult slog in English translations.
October 19, 2020
Well, it's Guy de Maupassant, for pity's sake. What can I say? I grew up with some of these stories. Fabulous - though some of them, I have to admit, wouldn't pass muster for today's "rules" on writing short stories. But on that basis Tolstoy and Dickens would never have got past a trade publisher's editor either. Who cares! I just love them.
me-anthology
June 10, 2021Warning! This collection contains many fake Maupassant stories. The Project Gutenberg version contain at least two: "The Lancer's Wife" and "The Thief"; while the Collier/Dunne edition contains many more.
May 6, 2024
I don't really know what to say. Good prose, generally portraits of a bleak and brutal world, lacking in justice and ruled by cynicism.
December 8, 2024
Attempts to describe ordinary life without an empathetic heart and sympathetic ear are often led to cliched political or social screeds marred by a partisan ideology that fails to chime the bells of the hearts of universal readers across a great divide of territorial, cultural, and biological planes that we want to cross over. In this regard, Guy de Maupassant, a great 19th Century French writer stands alone, showing us what life means to ordinary folk at the heart of its vicissitudes with an honest, profound observation of the performers of acts as an usher to the theatre of human drama.
The short stories are vignettes of collective contemporary lives of ordinary French folk from the middle class Parisian civil servants to the Normandy peasants that are all connected in one way or another in the wheel of fortune spun on the whims and caprice of Lady Fortune. Titles and ranks lose their forces in this game of cruel lottery, and the characters are fallen apart from their most cherished yearnings, treasured wishes, deluded hopes, and forced beliefs. Humanity, in general, lays bare its essence in the face of tragedy, and it is this aspect of human nature that Maupassant laments and pities as a detached observer of each act of the drama. “Two Friends” shows how life can be altered by the current political affairs of the time, while “Monsieur Parent” portrays a man consumed by solipsistic passions kept in a voluntary estrangement. The hypocrisy of religious sanctimoniousness aided by the idiosyncratic custom in the guise of regional tradition in “The Christening” is accused of a crime against humanity. The bullying of meekness and joviality in “Toine” manifests Shakespeare’s adage that the unkindest beast is kinder than mankind. And there is the awakening of greed and sloth in “The False Gems” as Lady Fortune beckons with a fortuitous lure that even you will be tempted into. The panoply of emotions, varied incidents, and inner conflicts are blatantly displayed in their revelation but are nuanced in their language.
Maupassant is a genius in this regard that he elevates the perspective on the seemingly ordinary outlook on life into the intricate psychology of the human mind with the feeling of the sublime as though seen from the position of a god or an angel not permitted to interfere with mortal life. Through the characters, Maupassant shows us what makes them behave the way they do lest we should criticize their follies and foibles a priori. He is in a way pre-existentialist by which the experience of their characters precedes their existence. That is, if you know them, you will understand them. Maupassant through the literary looking glassed-selves of the characters tells us to read their own stories breathed in a pulsation of unfulfilled longings, disallowed happiness, and shattered dreams to find sorrow and suffering enough to disarm al hostility toward them.
This book is not for a rapid reading at one sitting. Rather you should read this anthology of short stories chapters by chapters, words by words, day after day like you are reading psalms that speak to your heart amid the vicissitudes of life that try your trust in yourself and others. For that’s what Maupassant wants you to as life is seldom fathomable to ascertain how far it will have to be lived and how much it can be appreciated based upon your own appreciation of the meaning of life in daily life.
The short stories are vignettes of collective contemporary lives of ordinary French folk from the middle class Parisian civil servants to the Normandy peasants that are all connected in one way or another in the wheel of fortune spun on the whims and caprice of Lady Fortune. Titles and ranks lose their forces in this game of cruel lottery, and the characters are fallen apart from their most cherished yearnings, treasured wishes, deluded hopes, and forced beliefs. Humanity, in general, lays bare its essence in the face of tragedy, and it is this aspect of human nature that Maupassant laments and pities as a detached observer of each act of the drama. “Two Friends” shows how life can be altered by the current political affairs of the time, while “Monsieur Parent” portrays a man consumed by solipsistic passions kept in a voluntary estrangement. The hypocrisy of religious sanctimoniousness aided by the idiosyncratic custom in the guise of regional tradition in “The Christening” is accused of a crime against humanity. The bullying of meekness and joviality in “Toine” manifests Shakespeare’s adage that the unkindest beast is kinder than mankind. And there is the awakening of greed and sloth in “The False Gems” as Lady Fortune beckons with a fortuitous lure that even you will be tempted into. The panoply of emotions, varied incidents, and inner conflicts are blatantly displayed in their revelation but are nuanced in their language.
Maupassant is a genius in this regard that he elevates the perspective on the seemingly ordinary outlook on life into the intricate psychology of the human mind with the feeling of the sublime as though seen from the position of a god or an angel not permitted to interfere with mortal life. Through the characters, Maupassant shows us what makes them behave the way they do lest we should criticize their follies and foibles a priori. He is in a way pre-existentialist by which the experience of their characters precedes their existence. That is, if you know them, you will understand them. Maupassant through the literary looking glassed-selves of the characters tells us to read their own stories breathed in a pulsation of unfulfilled longings, disallowed happiness, and shattered dreams to find sorrow and suffering enough to disarm al hostility toward them.
This book is not for a rapid reading at one sitting. Rather you should read this anthology of short stories chapters by chapters, words by words, day after day like you are reading psalms that speak to your heart amid the vicissitudes of life that try your trust in yourself and others. For that’s what Maupassant wants you to as life is seldom fathomable to ascertain how far it will have to be lived and how much it can be appreciated based upon your own appreciation of the meaning of life in daily life.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews