"Guy de Maupassant's Selected Works highlights the essential works of the famed writer in a masterful new translation. The tales are organized along predominant themes from Maupassant's body of work: nineteenth-century French society, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and the supernatural. Maupassant skillfully crafts portraits of the daily struggles and unseen superstitions of nineteenth-century France. Readers of this edition will find explanatory footnotes and an introduction by the editor. The text of these twenty-eight stories and two novellas has been newly translated. "Contexts" looks at the many influences in Maupassant's life from politics and social types to women, love and marriage, the supernatural, and pessimism, illness and despair. In this section, readers will be presented with a collection of letters, articles, essays, and prefaces that examine these core themes. "Criticism" provides a comprehensive overview of early and modern commentary on Guy de Maupassant's body of work and the stories in this edition, including nineteenth-century reviews by contemporaires like Henry James and Joseph Conrad and numerous modern critical essays that follow the same thematic approach as the collection. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included."--