Stendhal

Lore & Background

Marie-Henri Beyle was born in Grenoble into a bourgeois family. He was an unhappy child, disliking his father and mourning his mother, who died when he was seven. After Napoleon's fall, he settled in Milan, which he considered the happiest years of his life, before returning to Paris.

Reader's Guide

Stendhal's significance lies in his pioneering psychological realism, which influenced later writers. His novels, especially Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme, are noted for their acute analysis of character psychology. He also wrote De l'amour, a work on passionate love that introduced the concept of 'crystallization,' later lauded as an early modern attempt at understanding love. Contemporary readers did not fully appreciate his realistic style during the Romantic period; he was not fully appreciated until the beginning of the 20th century. He dedicated his writing to 'the Happy Few.' Stendhal identified with nascent liberalism and considered Romanticism the literary counterpart of liberalism. He was a dandy and womaniser, yet his genuine empathy towards women led Simone de Beauvoir to credit him as a feminist writer.

Did You Know?

• Stendhal used more than a hundred pseudonyms, including 'Louis Alexandre Bombet' and 'Anastasius Serpière'.
• He crossed the Berezina River during Napoleon's retreat by finding a usable ford, which probably saved his life.
• His novel The Charterhouse of Parma was written in 52 days.
• A president of the American Psychological Association called Stendhal 'a first-rate psychologist before the official term was coined'.