French novelist a major figure of world literature. His short stories such as "Un parfum à sentir" "La Peste à Florence" and "Bibliomanie" (1838) or "Quidquid volueris" and "Passion et vertu" (1837) were followed by a romantic first-person confession. Mémoires d'un fou (1838) and a philosophical drama Smarh (1839). Expelled from his lycée in 1839 he passed his baccalauréat by private study and enrolled reluctantly as a law student in Paris. There he completed Novembre (1842) a pessimistic confession which was more sophisticated than Mémoires d'un fou switching (IVerther-Wkc) from first to third person and including an intercalated episode with Marie a prostitute who initiates him sexually before recounting her own mirror-image story.