The Foreign Soul & the Angelus

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 - 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, and as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives and destinies and social forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms.Maupassant was a protégé of Gustave Flaubert and his stories are characterized by economy of style and efficient, seemingly effortless dénouements (outcomes). Many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, describing the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught up in events beyond their control, are permanently changed by their experiences. He wrote 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse. His first published story, "Boule de Suif" ("The Dumpling", 1880), is often considered his masterpiece.Leo Tolstoy used Maupassant as the subject for one of his essays on art: The Works of Guy de Maupassant. His stories are second only to Shakespeare in their inspiration of movie adaptations with films ranging from Stagecoach, Oyuki the Virgin and Masculine Feminine.Friedrich Nietzsche's autobiography mentions him in the following text:"I cannot at all conceive in which century of history one could haul together such inquisitive and at the same time delicate psychologists as one can in contemporary Paris: I can name as a sample - for their number is by no means small, ... or to pick out one of the stronger race, a genuine Latin to whom I am particularly attached, Guy de Maupassant."

In The Foreign Soul we are in classic Maupassant territory. Robert Mariolle, a wealthy Parisian bachelor, has just arrived in the fashionable spa town of Aix-les-Bains determined to enjoy himself at the casino in the company of high society, attempting to get over his break up with mistress, Henriette Lambel. The Angelus was intended to be Maupassant's great masterpiece, an ambitious inverted allegory of Christianity into which the author would pour his growing pessimism and despair. Set during the Franco-Prussian War, as were some of Maupassant's finest short stories, The Angelus finds the pregnant Countess de Brémontal alone in her château as Prussian troops move into the neighbourhood. Here are the first English translations of Maupassant's two unfinished novels, The Foreign Soul [L'Ame étrangère] and The Angelus [L'Angélus], together with full critical apparatus, including secondary sources outlining Maupassant's future plot ideas and an essay on The Foreign Soul by Paul Bourget.