Stendhal

Marie-Henri Beyle, known by his pen name Stendhal, was a French writer who lived from 1783 to 1842. He is best known for the novels Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839), works praised for their acute psychological analysis of character and regarded as founding examples of literary realism. He also wrote De l'amour, a study of romantic love that introduced the concept of emotional crystallization and was largely ignored on publication before later being recognized as an early attempt at a psychology of love. Stendhal described himself as an egotist, a trait he built into many of his fictional characters.