Honore Balzac: 591 books

Like many of the short stories in Honore de Balzac's vast story cycle The Human Comedy, "The Red Inn" is a tale within a tale. After a pleasant dinner at the Red Inn, guests begin to swap anecdotes. German businessman Hermann contributes to the discussion with a story about a French soldier who was imprisoned after being unjustly accused of committing a murder.

This and the successor volumes in this series provides a historical view of how and what several important novelists were writing about these subjects in the past by making a number of these novels available inexpensively in a single place.  A modern reader may consider them rather tame if they...

The Lily Of The Valley by Honore de Balzac.

Some of Honore de Balzac's best writing focuses on the frustrations and passions of women trapped in unhappy marriages. In the novella "The Deserted Woman," the Vicomtesse de Beauseant is trapped, but it is partially a trap of her own making. Abandoned by her lover and estranged from her husband, she contemplates her limited options.

In this novella from Honore de Balzac, an impoverished mother and daughter slave away as embroiderers but are barely able to evade starvation. Finally, what seems to be a blessing enters into their lives -- an older gentleman falls in love with the daughter, Caroline, and whisks her away to a fine country estate. Will Caroline get the happily-ever-after she so richly deserves?

Droll Stories, by Honore de Balzac.

Some of the short stories in the Philosophical Studies section of Honore de Balzac's The Human Comedy have hints of the mystical and supernatural. These elements are very pronounced in the spine-chilling tale "The Elixir of Life," which veers into the territory of gothic horror. In the story, a dying man confides to his son that he has found a way to cheat death and achieve immortality.

"The Atheist's Mass" is a short story from the "Scenes From Private Life" section of Honore de Balzac's story cycle The Human Comedy. One day, the narrator happens to see one of his acquaintances, a prominent doctor, attending mass. Since he knows that Dr. Desplein is an avowed atheist, the narrator's...

This novel is one of the pillars of the Scenes of Provincial Life section of Honore de Balzac's story cycle The Human Comedy. Through a series of tragedies and coincidences, a kind and pious teenager named Ursula has been taken in by an octogenarian doctor, Denis Minoret. Inspired by Ursula's goodness,...

This short story is part of the Scenes of Paris Life section of Honore de Balzac's epic masterpiece The Human Comedy. Pierre Grassou is an artist who has many of the attributes necessary for success -- but lacks that spark of creativity. Rather than painting original works, he begins painting copies...

In Paris, where men of thought and study bear a certain likeness to one another, living as they do in a common centre, you must have met with several resembling Monsieur Rabourdin, whose acquaintance we are about to make at a moment when he is head of a bureau in one of our most important ministries....

"The Purse" is a short story that makes up part of Honore de Balzac's epic cycle The Human Comedy. Daydreaming while working on a ladder, the painter Hippolyte Schinner accidentally falls and sustains an injury. Two neighbors -- a mother and daughter -- come to his aid, and he falls in love at first...

Immerse yourself in a French pastoral idyll in this engrossing tale from Honore de Balzac, whose unparalleled powers of description will whisk you away to La Grenadiere, a quaint estate in the midst of a blossoming orchard. Indeed, the house itself emerges as one of the most memorable characters in the story.

Throughout his entire literary career, French writer Honore de Balzac was fascinated by the many ways in which social class can impact the trajectory of a life. In the early novel The Lesser Bourgeoisie, an ambitious young lawyer named Theodose de la Peyrade tries every trick in the book to ingratiate himself with the affluent Thuillier family -- and finds his integrity threatened along the way.