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A bead crochet necklace made from crochet lace, sterling silver, and freshwater pearls.

A necklace is an article of jewellery which is worn around the neck. Necklaces are frequently formed from a metal jewellery chain. Others are woven or manufactured from cloth using string or twine.

Common features of necklaces include features such as colorful stones (particularly gemstones / jewels), wood (usually carved or polished), art glass, feathers, shells, beads or corals - a wide, wide variety of other adornments have also been used. If a necklace includes a primary hanging feature, it is called a pendant or amulet, if the hanging feature is itself a small container, that is called a locket.

History of necklaces[link]

Necklaces have been an integral part of jewelry since the time of ancient civilizations and predate the invention of writing.

The birth of necklaces is believed to be as old as the Stone Age, which is around 40,000 years old. The oldest necklaces were made of purely natural materials - before weaving and the invention of string, durable vines or pieces of animal sinew left over from hunts were tied together and adorned with shells, bones or teeth or colorful skins of human prey animals, bird feathers, corals, carved pieces of wood, colorful seeds or stones or naturally occurring gems, or other beautiful or artful natural elements found nearby.

Cloth working and metalworking greatly expanded the range of jewelry available to humans. Twine and string enabled the development of smaller, more durable, more intricate necklaces. After the Bronze Age began and humans discovered how to melt metal and cast it into shapes, bronze, copper, silver, gold, electrum, platinum and a variety of other metals were used to make eye-catching necklaces for both men and women, and metal chains became possible. Gemcutting and glassblowing allowed faceted and highly polished gemstones and/or beautiful art glass to be added to pieces.

In the modern era, a variety of new metals are available for necklaces that earlier generations could not properly melt until high-temperature crucibles and blowtorches were developed, such as stainless steel and titanium; electroplating has enabled mass ownership of gold (or at least gold-veneer) jewelry. Miniaturization and laser etching enable the crafting of finely detailed artwork, or insignias or other calligraphy, within individual necklace elements.

Types of necklaces[link]

Man wearing multiple necklaces. The Maasai of Kenya, Africa use necklaces as part of traditional attire.

Girl wearing a necklace. This type of metal fashion necklace is common in Europe and the Americas.

By length[link]

Women's necklaces are often classified by length.

Cross necklace

A cross necklace can be of any length

Choker

35 centimetres (14 in) to 41 centimetres (16 in) long and sits high on the neck.

Princess necklace

A princess necklace is 45 centimetres (18 in) to 50 centimetres (20 in) long, longer than a choker, but shorter than a matinee.

Matinee necklace

A matinee length necklace is 56 centimetres (22 in) to 58 centimetres (23 in) long - typically a single strand that rests at the top of the cleavage.

Opera necklace

An opera necklace is 75 centimetres (30 in) to 90 centimetres (35 in) long and sits at the breastbone.

Sautoir or rope necklace

A sautoir or rope necklace is any necklace longer than opera length.

Lariat necklace

A lariat is a very, very long variation on the sautoir or rope, without a clasp, often worn draped multiple times around the neck; the ends can be crossed over, looped, or knotted in various ways. This type of necklace sometimes incorporates a loop at one or both ends to allow it to be worn in the style of a lasso, or it may be worn doubled over with the ends passed through the loop formed in the middle.

By adornment type[link]

This section requires expansion.

Diamond necklace

A diamond necklace is a necklace that incorporates diamonds - they are often given as gifts in Western countries as signs of love and fealty between wealthy lovers or families. There are a variety of diamond necklaces available to the average consumer including the diamond eternity necklace, the diamond 'V' necklace, the diamond 'Y' necklace and the diamonds by the yard necklace.^[1]

Pearl necklace

Pearl necklaces are popular among women. There are two specific named kinds of pearl necklaces - a uniform pearl necklace consists of pearls that appear to be all the same size, although normally there is a slight difference towards the ends so they appear to be in proportion. A bib necklace is made of multiple strands of stepped pearls. Many other variations also exist.

Tooth pendant necklace

Some men's necklaces (and a few women's) attach an animal tooth as the pendant portion. A particularly popular variant is a leather string necklace with a shark tooth attached.^{[citation needed]}

Prayer bead necklace

Prayer beads, meant to help serve as a focus of meditation or prayer and/or count the recitations or study of religious verses, are sometimes worn in necklace form. Prayer bead necklaces usually contain beads of any kind (often wood beads, seeds or other easily available substances associated with spirituality and/or humility) along their full visible length.

See also[link]

Gemology and Jewelry portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Necklaces

Look up necklace in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Affair of the diamond necklace
• Bracelet
• Belly chain
• Bling-bling
• Choker
• Collar
• Figaro chain
• Jewellery chain
• Livery collar
• Love beads
• Omega chain
• Torc
• Necklace splitting problem
• Usekh collar

Notes and references[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2011)

Guy de Maupassant
Born	(1850-08-05)5 August 1850
Died	6 July 1893(1893-07-06) (aged 42)
Resting place	Montparnasse Cemetery
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, poet
Nationality	French
Genres	Naturalism, Realism
Influences Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Hippolyte Taine, Émile Zola, Arthur Schopenhauer
Influenced Raymond Carver, Anton Chekhov, O. Henry, Henry James, H. P. Lovecraft, W. Somerset Maugham, Tobias Wolff, Robert Louis Stevenson [1]
Signature

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant^[2] (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents.

A protégé of Flaubert, Maupassant's stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouement. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He authored some 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse. The story "Boule de Suif" ("Ball of Fat", 1880) is often accounted his masterpiece. His most unsettling horror story, "Le Horla" (1887), was about madness and suicide.

Biography[link]

Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5, 1850 at the château de Miromesnil, near Dieppe in the Seine-Inférieure (now Seine-Maritime) department in France. He was the first son of Laure Le Poittevin and Gustave de Maupassant, both from prosperous bourgeois families. When Maupassant was eleven and his brother Hervé was five, his mother, an independent-minded woman, risked social disgrace to obtain a legal separation from her husband.

After the separation, Le Poittevin kept her two sons, the elder Guy and younger Hervé. With the father’s absence, Maupassant’s mother became the most influential figure in the young boy’s life. She was an exceptionally well read woman and was very fond of classical literature, especially Shakespeare. Until the age of thirteen, Guy happily lived with his mother, to whom he was deeply devoted, at Étretat, in the Villa des Verguies, where, between the sea and the luxuriant countryside, he grew very fond of fishing and outdoor activities. At age thirteen, he was sent to a small seminary near Rouen for classical studies.

In October 1868, at the age of 18, he saved the famous poet Algernon Charles Swinburne from drowning off the coast of Étretat at Normandy.^[3] As he entered junior high school, he met the great author Gustave Flaubert.

He first entered a seminary at Yvetot, but deliberately got himself expelled. From his early education he retained a marked hostility to religion. Then he was sent to the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen^[4] where he proved a good scholar indulging in poetry and taking a prominent part in theatricals.

The Franco-Prussian War broke out soon after his graduation from college in 1870; he enlisted as a volunteer and fought bravely. Afterwards, in 1871, he left Normandy and moved to Paris where he spent ten years as a clerk in the Navy Department. During these ten tedious years his only recreation and relaxation was canoeing on the Seine on Sundays and holidays.

Gustave Flaubert took him under his protection and acted as a kind of literary guardian to him, guiding his debut in journalism and literature. At Flaubert's home he met Émile Zola and the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, as well as many of the proponents of the realist and naturalist schools.

In 1878, he was transferred to the Ministry of Public Instruction and became a contributing editor of several leading newspapers such as Le Figaro, Gil Blas, Le Gaulois and l'Écho de Paris. He devoted his spare time to writing novels and short stories.

In 1880 he published what is considered his first masterpiece, "Boule de Suif", which met with an instant and tremendous success. Flaubert characterized it as "a masterpiece that will endure." This was Maupassant's first piece of short fiction set during the Franco-Prussian War, and was followed by short stories such as "Deux Amis", "Mother Savage", and "Mademoiselle Fifi".

The decade from 1880 to 1891 was the most fertile period of Maupassant's life. Made famous by his first short story, he worked methodically and produced two or sometimes four volumes annually. He combined talent and practical business sense, which made him wealthy.

In 1881 he published his first volume of short stories under the title of La Maison Tellier; it reached its twelfth edition within two years; in 1883 he finished his first novel, Une Vie (translated into English as A Woman's Life), 25,000 copies of which were sold in less than a year. In his novels, he concentrated all his observations scattered in his short stories. His second novel Bel-Ami, which came out in 1885, had thirty-seven printings in four months.

Guy de Maupassant early in his career.

His editor, Havard, commissioned him to write new masterpieces and Maupassant continued to produce them without the slightest apparent effort. At this time he wrote what many consider to be his greatest novel, Pierre et Jean.

With a natural aversion to society, he loved retirement, solitude, and meditation. He traveled extensively in Algeria, Italy, England, Brittany, Sicily, Auvergne, and from each voyage brought back a new volume. He cruised on his private yacht "Bel-Ami," named after his earlier novel. This feverish life did not prevent him from making friends among the literary celebrities of his day: Alexandre Dumas, fils had a paternal affection for him; at Aix-les-Bains he met Hippolyte Taine and fell under the spell of the philosopher-historian.

Flaubert continued to act as his literary godfather. His friendship with the Goncourts was of short duration; his frank and practical nature reacted against the ambiance of gossip, scandal, duplicity, and invidious criticism that the two brothers had created around them in the guise of an 18th-century style salon.

Maupassant was but one of a fair number of 19th-century Parisians who did not care for the Eiffel tower; indeed, he often ate lunch in the restaurant at its base, not out of any preference for the food, but because it was only there that he could avoid seeing its otherwise unavoidable profile.^[5] Moreover, he and forty-six other Parisian literary and artistic notables attached their names to letter of protest, ornate as it was irate, against the tower's construction to the then Minister of Public Works.^[6]

Maupassant also wrote under several pseudonyms such as Joseph Prunier, Guy de Valmont, and Maufrigneuse (which he used from 1881 to 1885).

In his later years he developed a constant desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death and crazed paranoia of persecution that came from the syphilis he had contracted in his early days. On January 2, 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat and was committed to the celebrated private asylum of Dr Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris, where he died on July 6, 1893.

Guy De Maupassant penned his own epitaph: "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing." He is buried in Section 26 of the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.

Significance[link]

Maupassant is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story. He delighted in clever plotting, and served as a model for Somerset Maugham and O. Henry in this respect. His stories about expensive jewelry ("The Necklace", "Les Bijoux") are imitated with a twist by Maugham ("Mr Know-All", "A String of Beads") and Henry James.

Taking his cue from Balzac, Maupassant wrote comfortably in both the high-Realist and fantastic modes; stories and novels such as "L'Héritage" and Bel-Ami aim to recreate Third Republic France in a realistic way, whereas many of the short stories (notably "Le Horla" and "Qui sait?") describe apparently supernatural phenomena.

The supernatural in Maupassant, however, is often implicitly a symptom of the protagonists' troubled minds; Maupassant was fascinated by the burgeoning discipline of psychiatry, and attended the public lectures of Jean-Martin Charcot between 1885 and 1886.^[7] This interest is reflected in his fiction.

Criticism[link]

Maupassant is notable as the subject of one of Leo Tolstoy's essays on art: The Works of Guy de Maupassant.

Friedrich Nietzsche's autobiography mentions him in the following text:

"I cannot at all conceive in which century of history one could haul together such inquisitive and at the same time delicate psychologists as one can in contemporary Paris: I can name as a sample – for their number is by no means small, ... or to pick out one of the stronger race, a genuine Latin to whom I am particularly attached, Guy de Maupassant."

Bibliography[link]

Short stories[link]

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Novels[link]

• A Woman's Life (1883)
• Bel-Ami (1885)
• Mont-Oriol (1887)
• Pierre et Jean (1888)
• Fort comme la mort (1889)
• Notre Cœur (1890)
• " A Diary on CAleb Lee" (2012)

Short-story collections[link]

• Les Soirées de Médan (with Zola, Huysmans et al. Contains Boule de Suif by Maupassant) (1880)
• La Maison Tellier (1881)
• Mademoiselle Fifi (1882)
• Contes de la bécasse (1887)
• A Vendetta (1883)
• Miss Harriet (1884)
• Les Sœurs Rondoli (1884)
• Clair de lune (1884) (contains "Les Bijoux")
• Yvette (1884)
• Toine (1885)
• Contes du jour et de la nuit (1885) (contains "La Parure" or "The Necklace")
• Monsieur Parent (1886)
• La Petite Roque (1886)
• Le Horla (1887)
• Le Rosier de Madame Husson (1888)
• La Main gauche (1889)
• L'Inutile Beauté (1890)
• La Main d'Ecorché

Travel writing[link]

• Au soleil (1884)
• Sur l'eau (1888)
• La Vie errante (1890)

Poetry[link]

• Des vers (1880)^[8]

References[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Guy de Maupassant

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Guy de Maupassant

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Guy de Maupassant

External links[link]

• Maupassantiana, a French Scholar Website on Maupassant and his Works.
• Works by or about Guy de Maupassant at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Works by Guy de Maupassant at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
• Works by Guy de Maupassant at LibriVox (audiobooks)
• Université McGill: le roman selon les romanciers Recensement et analyse des écrits non romanesques de Guy de Maupassant
• Works by Guy de Maupassant at Online Literature (HTML)
• Works by Guy de Maupassant in Ebooks (French)
• Works by or about Guy de Maupassant in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Works by Guy de Maupassant (text, concordances and frequency list)
• Maupassant biography
• (French) Oeuvres de Maupassant, à Athena