Stendhal | Notable biographies

(1783/01/23 - 1842/03/23)

Stendhal
Marie Henri Beyle
French essayist and novelist

He was born on 23 January 1783 in Grenoble. Son of Cherubin Beyle, lawyer in the Provincial Court. His mother died when he was seven years old.
He was educated by a priest and later studied at the secular École Centrale de Grenoble. He travels to Paris, and with 17 years he enlisted in the army of Napoleón Bonaparte. In 1802 he left arms and settled in Paris. In the year 1806, without financial means which would allow it to keep, he returned to the army, where he held diplomatic missions and take part in the failed Russian campaign of 1812. He was a Jacobin and anticlerical.
He wrote novels, criticism, biographies and travel books. He cultivated the romance not only in literary, but also stylistic and political sense. In the year 1814 he travelled to Italy, where for seven years is dedicated to writing the history of painting in Italy (1817) and in addition, a book of personal memories and academics called Rome, Naples and Florence in 1817 (1817). The latter was the first book published under the pseudonym of Stendhal.
Accused by the Austrian Government, which then ruled in the North of Italy, supporting the independence movement Italian, he was expelled from Italy in 1821. He returned to France and settled in Paris, where led a very active social and intellectual life frequenting literary salons where he excelled in the art of conversation. A year later it ends about love (1822), treatise on the nature of love. In the work is about marriage, women, morality and politics.
In 1830 he was appointed consul of France in the Italian town of Trieste. In 1831 was assigned toCivitavecchia, near Rome, where he wrote his two major novels. The red and the black (1830) where it makes an analysis of contemporary society through an ambitious young of provinces. The Charterhouse of Parma (1839) tells the story of a young nobleman who is involved in political intrigues.
Stendhal died on 23 March 1842 in Paris of a heart attack.