Beyle

Beyle, Marie Henri, better known under his pseudonym of De Stendhal, was born at Grenoble in 1783, and educated at the Ecole Polytechnique. After various essays in other careers he finally adopted literature as a profession. He spent much of his life in Italy, and was appointed French Consul at Civita Vecchia in 1830. His graver works include the Lives of Haydn, Mozart, and Metastasio, a History of Painting in Italy, Rome, Naples, and Florence in 1817, the Life of Rossini, and Memoires d'un Touriste. But his fame rests chiefly on his two powerful novels, Rouge et Noir, and La Chartreuse de Parme, in which his vein of irony, wit, and analytical observation is fully displayed. Balzac was influenced by his example. He was strangely averse to publicity, and wrote under many assumed names. He died suddenly in 1842.