Guy de Maupassant, one of France’s most prolific writers of the 19th century, is also the father of the modern short story, for good reason. He wrote over three hundred short stories throughout his career, with most of them being written during the 1880s. While most of these dealt with mundane occurrences, some of them were quite strange. Maupassant’s style is much more approachable than a lot of other Victorian-era authors. Each of his short stories immediately grab your attention and make you wonder where exactly he is going with it. Oftentimes, the ending is not the climax of the story; there doesn’t even seem to be a climax in some of them. Maupassant did not write mere stories. He wrote about occurrences that otherwise would not be noticed or remembered and strove to find a deeper meaning behind them. While the stories chosen for this collection are juicier than his others, this element is still to be found in them. Also included is my essay, “The Demise of Maupas