French · b. 1799
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and a founder of literary realism, author of the vast La Comédie humaine, an interconnected panorama of French society including Père Goriot and Lost Illusions.
Honoré de Balzac was one of the most prodigious novelists in history, working at a furious pace to create an immense body of interlinked fiction.
His monumental project La Comédie humaine gathers some ninety novels and stories — including Père Goriot, Eugénie Grandet, and Lost Illusions — into a sweeping, recurring-character portrait of French society after the Revolution, anatomizing money, ambition, class, and desire with unmatched scope and energy. His detailed realism profoundly influenced the development of the novel.
Balzac is recognized as a giant of nineteenth-century literature and a founder of realism, whose vast human comedy maps an entire society.
by Honoré de Balzac
In a Parisian boarding house, the ambitious young Eugène de Rastignac encounters two extremes: old Goriot, who has sacrificed everything for daughters who abandon him, and the criminal Vautrin, who offers a ruthless shortcut to success. The central novel of the Comédie humaine and Balzac's most concentrated study of money and society.
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by Honoré de Balzac
Bette Fischer, a poor seamstress humiliated by her beautiful cousin Adeline's superior life, quietly engineers the destruction of Adeline's family — through the Hulot family's weakness for women, and through her own secret alliance with the courtesan Valérie Marneffe. Balzac's greatest study of revenge and female power.
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Honoré de Balzac's complete bibliography in order — from Père Goriot and Cousin Bette to Lost Illusions. Best starting points and reading order for the Comédie Humaine.
guide
Where to start with Honoré de Balzac — whether to begin with Père Goriot or Cousin Bette. A complete reading guide to the great French novelist of the Comédie humaine.
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