Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850), was a French novelist.

He was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France in the rue de l'Armée Italienne.

Arriving in Paris as a young man he mingled with the "children of the new century" who saw around them the ruins of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic empire, and who embraced creativity and personal excess with equal measures of disillusionment and idealism. In a long series of interconnected novels he set out to describe the society around him where a new, false aristocracy based on wealth and corruption had replaced the certainties of the Ancien Régime (Old Order). Religion, which had sanctioned the old hierarchy, had gone and a "new priesthood" of financiers had sprung up to be the new controllers of destinies. "There is nothing left for literature but mockery in a world that has collapsed" he wrote in 1831, but the view of humanity that emerges from his novels is not as jaded as this suggests -- it is moral and analytic, and as a result he is still widely read. Having first got into print by writing pot-boiler historical novels in the style of Walter Scott, it occurred to him that the modern history around him was as vivid and as full of intrigue as any scenario of the past, and capable of an equally vivid treatment.

In 1849, when his health had broken down, he travelled to Poland to visit Eveline Hanska, a rich Polish lady, with whom he had corresponded for more than 15 years. In 1850 she became his wife, and three months later, Balzac died.

He would become one of the creators of Realism in literature, though his work lies still largely in the tradition of French Literary Romanticism. His Human Comedy (La Comédie humaine) spanned more than 90 novels and short stories in an attempt to comprehend and depict the realities of life in contemporary bourgeois France.

Balzac had legendarily intimidating work habits - he wrote for up to 15 hours a day, fuelled by innumerable cups of black coffee. Because of this extraordinarily large output, many of the novels display minor imperfections and in some cases outright careless writing. Several, however, have achieved a widely-held reputation as masterpieces:

• (1831) La peau de chagrin
• (1833) Eugènie Grandet
• (1835) Le père Goriot [1]
• (1837) Les illusions perdues (I, 1837; II, 1839; III, 1843)
• (1846) La Cousine Bette

Balzac's realistic prose and his strength as an encyclopedic recorder of his age outshine any small detracting qualities of his style to make him a Dickensian bastion of French literature.

Balzac lies buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France. He is commemorated by a monumental statue commissioned from Auguste Rodin.

Contents

1 The Human Comedy 1.1 Scenes From Provincial Life 1.2 Scenes From Parisian Life 1.3 Scenes From Political Life 1.4 Scenes From Military Life 1.5 Scenes From Country Life 1.6 Philosophical Studies 2 External links

The Human Comedy

Balzac's works have fallen into the public domain, and a number of them are available online from Project Gutenberg. Balzac undertook a huge project: The Human Comedy, which is a collection of about 100 linked stories and novels. The title of the series is a reference to Dante's "Divine Comedy." While Balzac sought the comprehensive scope of Dante, his title indicates the wordly, human concerns of a realist novelist. The stories are placed in a variety of settings, with characters reappearing in multiple stories. The Balzac Plan of the Comédie Humaine comprises:

Scenes From Provincial Life

• Ursule Mirouet
• Eugenie Grandet
• The Celibates:
  • Pierrette
  • The Vicar of Tours
• A Bachelor's Establishment
• The Two Brothers
• The Black Sheep
• Parisians in the Country:
  • Gaudissart the Great or The Illustrious Gaudissart
  • The Muse of the Department
• The Jealousies of a Country Town:
  • The Old Maid
  • The Collection of Antiquities
• The Lily of the Valley
• Lost Illusions:--I.
  • The Two Poets
  • A Distinguished Provincial at Paris, Part 1
• Lost Illusions:--II.
  • A Distinguished Provincial at Paris, Part 2
  • Eve and David

Scenes From Parisian Life

• Scenes from a Courtesan's Life:
  • Esther Happy
  • What Love Costs an Old Man
  • The End of Evil Ways
  • Vautrin's Last Avatar
• A Prince of Bohemia
• A Man of Business
• Gaudissart II.
• The Unwitting Actors or The Unwitting Comedians
• The Thirteen:
  • Ferragus
  • The Duchesse de Langeais
  • The Girl with the Golden Eyes
• Father Goriot (Le père Goriot)
• The Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau
• The Firm of Nucingen
• The Secrets of a Princess or The Secrets of the Princess Cadignan
• The Government Clerks
• Bureaucracy
• Sarrasine
• Facine Cane
• Poor Relations:--I.
  • Cousin Betty
• Poor Relations:--II.
  • Cousin Pons
• The Middle Classes or The Lesser Bourgeoise

Scenes From Political Life

• The Gondreville Mystery or An Historical Mystery
• An Episode Under the Terror
• The Seamy Side of History: or The Brotherhood of Consolation:
  • Madame de la Chanterie
  • Initiated or The Initiate
• Z. Marcas
• The Member for Arcis or The Deputy for Arcis

Scenes From Military Life

• The Chouans
• A Passion in the Desert

Scenes From Country Life

• The Country Doctor
• The Country Parson or The Village Rector
• The Peasantry or Sons of the Soil

Philosophical Studies

• The Magic Skin
• The Quest of the Absolute or The Alkahest
• Christ in Flanders
• Melmoth Reconciled
• The Unknown Masterpiece or The Hidden Masterpiece
• The Hated Son
• Gambara
• Massimilla Doni
• The Maranas or Juana
• Farewell
• The Conscript or The Recruit
• El Verdugo
• A Seaside Tragedy or A Drama on the Seashore
• The Red Inn
• The Elixir of Life
• Maitre Cornelius
• About Catherine de' Medici
  • The Calvinist Martyr
  • The Ruggieri's Secret
  • The Two Dreams
• Louis Lambert
• The Exiles
• Seraphita

External links

• Project Gutenberg editions of Balzac's works
• Full text of the biography Honore de Balzac by Albert Keim
• Comprehensive works with dates

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Balzac is also a commune in the Charente département of France, and the name of a Japanese horror-punk band.