In this episode we'll be reading two short stories by Guy de Maupassant – The Diamond Necklace and In the Spring. The French author was renowned as a master of the short story form and is best known for his surprise endings. Maupassant was a member of the Naturalist school – a literary movement that depicted characters and scenes realistically and often pessimistically as opposed to the unrealistic portrayals found in Romanticism, a preceding literary style.