“The Diamond Necklace” Audio

“The Diamond Necklace” (La Parure) is a short story by French author Guy de Maupassant, considered a master of the form.  A 19th-century Naturalist author, de Maupassant was a protégé of Gustave Flaubert and was prolific in his writing, penning over three hundred short stories before his death, many of which inspired film adaptations. A great fan of both William Shakespeare and Honoré de Balzac, his work in turn influenced many other famed writers of short stories, including Somerset Maugham and O. Henry. Indeed, even the celebrated ending of Henry James’s Paste is considered to owe a debt to The Diamond Necklace (see if you can spot why this is so). La Parure was first published in 1884 in the French newspaper, Le Gaulois, and has become one of De Maupassant’s most popular tales.

If you would like to read along as you listen, you can find the full text of “The Diamond Necklace” here.

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If you found this reading of The Diamond Necklace by Guy De Maupassant to be helpful in visualizing the story and characters, you may enjoy some of our other Introduction to Literature (E1) videos

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When will you read Guy de Maupassant’s work in Excellence in Literature?

“The Diamond Necklace” is studied in Module 1.1 of Introduction to Literature.