Stendhal

(1783 - 1842)

Born in Grenoble in 1783 and having “read Shakespeare continuously from 1796 to 1799,” Stendhal, né Marie-Henri Beyle, became an adjunct military commissary for Napoleon’s army in 1806. He lived in Italy after the fall of the French empire in 1814, published The Red and the Black in 1830, and received the Legion of Honor in 1835.