French literature By category French Literary History Medieval
16th Century - 17th Century
18th Century -19th Century
20th Century - ContemporaryFrench Writers Chronological list
Writers by category
Novelists - Playwrights
Poets - Essayists
Short Story WritersFrance Portal Literature Portal
Marie-Henri Beyle (January 23, 1783 - March 23, 1842), better known by his penname Stendhal, was a 19th century French Writer. He is known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology and for the dryness of his writing-style. He is considered one of the foremost and earliest practioners of the realistic form, and his best novels are Le Rouge et le Noir (1830; The Red and the Black) and La Chartreuse de Parme (1839; The Charterhouse of Parma).
Beyle used the pseudonym "Stendhal", supposedly chosen as an Anagram of "Shetland" (although Georges Perec may have invented this explanation - references to Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) feature extensively in Perec's unfinished last novel 53 jours). Alternatively, some scholars believe he borrowed his nom de plume from the German city of Stendal as a homage for Johann Joachim Winckelmann.
Contemporary readers did not fully appreciate Stendhal's realistic style during the Romantic period in which he lived; he was not fully appreciated until the beginning of the 20th century. He dedicated his writing to "the Happy Few", referring to those who would one day recognise his own genius. Today, Stendhal's works attract attention for their Irony and psychological and historical aspects.
Stendhal was an avid fan of music, particularly the composers Cimarosa, Mozart, and Rossini, the latter of whom he wrote an extensive biography, Vie de Rossini (1824), now more valued for its wide-ranging musical criticism than for its historical accuracy.
He died in Paris in 1842 and is interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre.
Stendhal's brief, saucy memoir, Souvenirs d'Egotisme (Memoirs of an Egotist) was published posthumously in 1892.
Novellas:
Nonfiction
His other works include short stories, journalism, travel books (among them Rome, Naples et Florence and Promenades dans Rome), a famous collection of essays on Italian painting, critical essays on Racine and Shakespeare, and biographies of several prominent figures of his time, including Napoleon, Haydn, Mozart, and Metastasio.