It was on this date, January 23, 1783, that the French novelist known as Stendhal was born Marie-Henri Beyle in Grenoble. He hated the Jesuit education provided by his pious aunt, so Beyle moved to Paris to study and to write. When the French Empire fell in 1814, he moved to Italy, which resulted in several love affairs and the travel book Rome, Naples et Florence en 1817 (1817), for which he first used his pen-name, Stendhal...

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Originally published January 2003 by Ronald Bruce Meyer.