The French Romantic author who wrote “The Red and the Black” was Stendhal, the pen name of Henri Beyle.
Published in 1830, the novel is titled “Le Rouge et le Noir” in French and follows Julien Sorel, an ambitious young man trying to rise above his provincial upbringing. Its subtitle, “A Chronicle of 1830,” places the personal drama within the political and social tensions of France’s Bourbon Restoration.
Stendhal combines romantic passion with sharp social observation. Julien is attracted to ideals associated with Napoleon and military glory, yet the society he enters makes the clergy a more practical route to advancement. The novel’s red-and-black contrast is often interpreted through that tension between military and ecclesiastical careers, although the title has other readings.
The answer is sometimes confused with Balzac, Dumas, or Hugo because all were major nineteenth-century French writers. Stendhal is especially remembered for psychological fiction, and his other celebrated novel is “The Charterhouse of Parma,” published in 1839.