William Boyd Appreciates Stendahl

“Stendhal” is a pseudonym. The author’s real name was Marie-Henri Beyle. Stendhal is best known for the great and classic 19th century French novels The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma. He was born in Grenoble in 1793 and died in Paris in 1842. I have chosen his strange autobiography instead of one of his novels because I think it is an extraordinary 19th century text, one that was only published in 1890, long after Stendhal’s death. It’s not clear why Stendhal chose the title, however. Very quickly he reveals that he himself is “Henri Brulard”—another false identity—and in a way this fact illustrates the astonishing modernity of this memoir.