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Stendhal, one of the most original and complex French writers of the first half of the 19th century, chiefly known for his works of fiction. His finest novels are Le Rouge et le noir (1830; The Red and the Black) and La Chartreuse de Parme (1839; The Charterhouse of Parma).

Stendhal’s writings and his personality were marked by a striking independence of mind. He was a romantic who kept his distance from Romanticism , an antiauthoritarian with a nostalgia for the pre-Revolutionary world, a dreamer and tender-hearted enthusiast who passed himself off as a cynic.

Le Rouge et le Noir (French pronunciation: [lə ʁuʒ e l(ə) nwaʁ]; meaning The Red and the Black) is a historical psychological novel in two volumes by Stendhal, published in 1830. It chronicles the attempts of a provincial young man to rise socially beyond his modest upbringing through a combination of talent, hard work, deception, and ...

The Red and the Black, novel by Stendhal, published in French in 1830 as Le Rouge et le noir. The novel, set in France during the Second Restoration (1815–30), is a powerful character study of Julien Sorel, an ambitious young man who uses seduction as a tool for advancement.

Stendhal Biography. Henri Beyle (Stendhal) was born in 1783, in Grenoble, into a respectable, middle-class family. Chérubin Beyle, Stendhal's father, a reactionary in politics, was an industrious, narrow-minded bourgeois, whom Henri detested and to whom he later referred as the "bâtard." Stendhal loved his mother tenderly, but this delightful ...