On de Maupassant

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 220, 17 September 1938, Page 10 (Supplement)

On de Maupassant

« pUY DE MAUPASSANT," by VJ Stanley Jackson (Duckworth), is a readable life of the famous French writer. Born in a chateau, Maupassant had his full share of the vicissitudes. Of fame and fortune. He fought in the FrancoPrussian War, and then entered the French Marine Department as a junior clerk, where he remained till the publication of hie first short story in 1880. It was an instantaneous success, and within a short time he found himself lionised and in receipt of a very large

income from his literary work. The joy of his first success was clouded by the death of Flaubert, who was his mentor and friend, and who had been hk mother's childhood playmate. Maupofisant's surcess was destined to last, but his life soon became a desperate struggle against the physical and mental illness which ultimately destroyed him. He died, in the early forties, in en asylum at Passy, of general paralysis, brought on by a long-standing affliction, possibly of a congenital nature. Mr. Jackson ha« written a sympathetic biography, of a popular type, concluding with" some attempt to assess the merits of Maupassant's art.