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Honore de Balzac

Born in 1799, Honore de Balzac, a novelist and playwright, is best known for presenting a panorama of French life and a founder of realism in European literature. His collection of short stories and novels, La Comédie Humaine (1832), focused on the years after the fall of Napoleon, in which he provided keen observations and uncensored details of French society.
Balzac’s working class realism was compared to Charles Dickens, and he is credited with influencing contemporary realism authors both in Europe and America, including Gustave Flaubert and American expatriate novelist, Henry James.
Balzak found love and married late in life. His personal experience was in keeping with the tragedy he detailed in some of his stories– he died just five months after his wedding in 1850.

Books

  • Father Goriot
  • The Exiles
  • Short Stories

  • About The Monk Amador
  • A Passion in the Desert
  • At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
  • Bertha the Penitent
  • Concerning A Poor Man Who Was Called Le Vieux Par-chemins
  • Concerning A Provost Who Did Not Recognise Things
  • Despair In Love
  • How the Chateau d’Azay Came to be Built
  • How The Pretty Maid Of Portillon Convinced Her Judge
  • Innocence
  • In Which It Is Demonstrated That Fortune Is Always Feminine
  • Louis Lambert
  • Melmoth Reconciled
  • Odd Sayings Of Three Pilgrims
  • Perseverance In Love
  • The Afflictions of an English Cat
  • The Atheist’s Mass
  • The Brothers-in-Arms
  • The Conscript
  • The Continence Of King Francis The First
  • The Danger Of Being Too Innocent
  • The Dear Night of Love
  • The Devil’s Heir
  • The Elixir of Life
  • The Fair Imperia
  • The Fair Imperia Married
  • The False Courtesan
  • The High Constable’s Wife
  • The King’s Sweetheart
  • The Maid Of Thilouse
  • The Merry Jests Of King Louis The Eleventh
  • The Merry Tattle Of The Nuns Of Poissy
  • The Message
  • The Recruit
  • The Red Inn
  • The Reproach
  • The Sermon Of The Merry Vicar Of Meudon
  • The Three Clerks Of Saint Nicholas
  • The Venial Sin
  • The Vicar Of Azay-le-rideau