Old Goriot has raised his two daughters to be selfish, vain, and greedy; when as adults they treat him badly, repaying his indulgence of their whims with indifference and cruelty, Goriot realizes that they are only behaving as they have been trained to. In this brilliant but bleak novel, virtually every character has been corrupted in some way by ...
Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman Madame de Bargeton, and prepares to forge his way in the glamorous beau monde of Paris. But Lucien has entered a world far more dangerous than he ...
Balzac is concerned with the choice between ruthless self-gratification and asceticism, dissipation and restraint, in a novel that is powerful in its symbolism and realistic depiction of decadence.
Eugene wants to get on in the world. So he has come to Paris, where the streets teem with chancers, criminals and social climbers - and everyone is out for what they can get. When he finds a place to stay at a shabby boarding house, he sees a potential plan to make a fortune: the two beautiful, aristocratic women who mysteriously come at night to ...
Eugénie Grandet, first the victim of her wealthy father's miserliness, then disappointed in her love for her faithless cousin Charles, ends up rich and lonely in the house where she grew up, with only a devoted servant for company. Despite its title, however, the novel is essentially a portrait of one of Balzac's favorite character types--the ...
Balzac's cycle of novels entitled LOST ILLUSIONS (ILLUSIONS PERDUES) was published between 1837 and 1843, and chronicles the life of Lucien de Rubempré and his rise from a small-town boy to a famous French poet in Paris, and then his fall as he returns, failed and suicidal, to his home town--only to be rescued from despair by a mysterious ...
Six short-story masterpieces by great French novelist include "An Episode During the Terror," "A Passion in the Desert," "The Revolutionary Conscript," 3 more. Excellent new English translations on facing pages.
Honora de Balzac is the narrator of this novel about Louis Lambert, a child prodigy. Balzac and Lambert are portrayed as students in Paris. They are both social outcasts who develop a love of philosophy. After a psychic dream, Lambert writes a metaphysical treatise that is later destroyed by a teacher. Lambert and Balzac have conflicting views and ...
Balzac's heroine is a rejected spinster who brings down an aristocratic family. One of the last novels in his massive literary project, LA COMEDIE HUMAINE, COUSIN BETTE provides a grim view of human depravity and greed. On the novel's vast canvas, every class of society is portrayed, connected by the petty passions, loves, and hates that they all ...
The Wrong Side of Paris, the final novel in Balzac’s The Human Comedy, is the compelling story of Godefroid, an abject failure at thirty, who seeks refuge from materialism by moving into a monastery-like lodging house in the shadows of Notre-Dame. Presided over by Madame de La Chanterie, a noblewoman with a tragic past, the house is ...
Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is an ageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living a placid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with his friend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to fine dining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and a dedication to the ...
Balzac's classic philosophical novel about a young man (Raphal) torn between two women, one whom he loves but who does not reciprocate his affections (Foedora, the "woman without a heart") and one who loves him but for whom initially he has only fraternal feelings (Pauline). The sentimental drama is associated with a philosophical one in ...
Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on the condescending patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philandering Baron Hulot and their daughter Hortense. Already deeply resentful of their wealth, when Bette learns that the man she is in love with plans to marry Hortense, she ...
Old Goriot has raised his two daughters to be selfish, vain, and greedy; when as adults they treat him badly, repaying his indulgence of their whims with indifference and cruelty, Goriot realizes that they are only behaving as they have been trained to. In this brilliant but bleak novel, virtually every character has been corrupted in some way by ...
One of the greatest French novelists, Balzac was also an accomplished writer of shorter fiction. This volume includes twelve of his finest short stories many of which feature characters from his epic series of novels the Comedie Humaine. Compelling tales of acute social and psychological insight, they fully demonstrate the mastery of suspense and ...
Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that make up Balzac's "History of the Thirteen" are concerned in part with the activities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secret society in nineteenth-century France. While the deeds of "The Thirteen" remain frequently in the background, however, the individual novels are concerned ...
Félix de Vandenesse goes to stay at the country chateau of the beautiful Henriette de Mortsauf and her husband. The two are in love, but she remains true to her husband, and she and Félix share nothing more than a lengthy but unconsummated flirtation. Years later, Henriette realizes what she has given up by her foolish constancy, but by then it is ...
Philippe and Joseph Bridau are two extremely different brothers. The elder, Philippe, is a superficially heroic soldier and adored by their mother Agathe. He is nonetheless a bitter figure, secretly gambling away her savings after a brief but glorious career in Napoleon's army. His younger brother Joseph, meanwhile, is fundamentally virtuous - but ...
The fjords of Norway create an enchanting setting for this story. Seraphita is an angel, both half-man and half-woman. The metaphysical plot involves two mortals who are in love with Seraphita, but the angel is in the last days of life and beyond earthly love. This novel is part of Balzac's La Comedie Humaine.
By the French author, who, along with Flaubert, is generally regarded as a founding-father of realism in European fiction. His large output of works, collectively entitled The Human Comedy (La Comdie Humaine), consists of 95 finished works (stories, novels and essays) and 48 unfinished works. His stories are an attempt to comprehend and depict the ...
The nameless narrator attends a ball held by a wealthy Parisian family, whose fortune comes from a work of art, and there meets an extraordinary old woman, who bears a strange resemblance to the statue depicted in the painting. He returns to his lodgings to tell the tragic, yet ultimately rewarding tale of the creation of the painting's ...
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
This story is one of Balzac's "Scenes de la Vie Privee" within the "Comedie Humaine" sequence, and describes the irresistible rise and fall of a perfume merchant in the Rue St Honore. This novel is the French 19th-century's great poem of bankruptcy.
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