Letters to Pauline

Determined to take his deeply loved younger sister Pauline's education in hand, Henri Beylebetter known by the most famous of his scores of noms de plume, Stendhalwas obliged to continue her tuition in epistolary fashion on leaving Grenoble. In his letters to her he instructs her in what she should read (Plutarch, Moliere, and Shakespeare); what to study (philosophy, logic, mathematics, and music); whether or not to get married (and to what kind of man); and generally how to enliven the tedium of a French provincial town. At the same time, he encourages her to think for herselfa process that, inevitably, reveals what he thought when thinking for himself.

Stendhal (1783–1842) is most famous for his two realist masterpieces, La Chartreuse de Parme and Le Rouge et le Noir, which deal with the political and social landscape of Restoration France and Italy.