I'm not going to list facts and bore you with all the dramatic circumstances of Maupassant's life, you can google it yourself, if you're interested (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/maupassa.htm) ;)

Instead, I would like to quote Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote in his autobiography:

"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."