Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (French: [ɔ.nɔ.ʁe d(ə) bal.zak]; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multifaceted characters, who are morally ambiguous. His writing influenced many subsequent novelists such as Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Eça de Queirós, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Benito Pérez Galdós, Marie Corelli, Henry James, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and Italo Calvino, and philosophers such as Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. Many of Balzac's works have been made into or have inspired films, and they are a continuing source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers and critics.
An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was an apprentice in a law office, but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.
Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly due to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal difficulties, and he ended several friendships over critical reviews. In 1850 he married Ewelina Hańska, his longtime love; he died five months later.

Works

Tragic verse

• Cromwell (1819)

Incomplete at time of death

• Le Corsaire (opera)
• Sténie
• Falthurne
• Corsino

Published pseudonymously
As "Lord R'Hoone", in collaboration

• L'Héritière de Birague (1822)
• Jean-Louis (1822)

As "Horace de Saint-Aubin"

• Clotilde de Lusignan (1822)
• Le Centenaire (1822)
• Le Vicaire des Ardennes (1822)
• La Dernière Fée (1823)
• Annette et le Criminal (Argow le Pirate) (1824)
• Wann-Chlore (1826)

Published anonymously

• Du Droit d'aînesse (1824)
• Histoire impartiale des Jésuites (1824)
• Code des gens honnêtes (1826)

Selected titles from La Comédie humaine

• Les Chouans (1829)
• Sarrasine (1830)
• La Peau de chagrin (1831)
• Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu (1831)
• Le Colonel Chabert (1832)
• Le Curé de Tours (1832)
• La Fille aux yeux d'or (1833)
• Eugénie Grandet (1833)
• Le Contrat de mariage (1835)
• Le Père Goriot (1835)
• Le Lys dans la vallée (1835)
• La Rabouilleuse (1842)
• Illusions perdues (I, 1837; II, 1839; III, 1843)
• La Cousine Bette (1846)
• Le Cousin Pons (1847)
• Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (1847)

Plays

• L'École des ménages (1839)
• Vautrin (1839)
• Les Ressources de Quinola (1842)
• Paméla Giraud (1842)
• La Marâtre (1848)
• Mercadet ou le faiseur (1848)

Tales

• Contes drolatiques (1832–37)
• La Grande Bretèche
• An Episode of terror

Summaries, reviews and other information about Balzac and his works are being collated at the collaborative blog La Comedie Humaine.<sup>[116]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac</sup>