Honore De Balzac: 586 books

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.

Fans of Romeo and Juliet will delight in the novella Vendetta, Honore de Balzac's unique take on the timeless theme of star-crossed lovers. Corsican immigrants Ginevra Piombo and Luigi Porta fall hopelessly in love, unaware of the fact that their respective families have long been ensnared in a multi-generational...

Part of Honore de Balzac's sprawling epic The Human Comedy, the novella The Commission in Lunacy focuses on the story of a bachelor who feels his youth rapidly slipping away and tries to renew his sense of vigor and fulfillment through various means. He crosses paths with the beguiling Madame d'Espard and soon finds himself caught up in a nefarious scheme.

This collection brings together two short stories, one from the father of French realism, Honore de Balzac, the other from Russian writer Alexander Amphiteatrof. Both of the tales are related to Napoleon in some way, examining the impact of the famed leader's exploits on the national cultures of the French and the Russians.

Though Honore de Balzac is now lauded as a master of the literary genre of social realism, a sizable number of his stories and novels also contain supernatural and mystical elements. The story "The Exiles" is set in the medieval period, and revolves around a couple who run a small boarding house -- and gradually begin to suspect that some of their boarders may be harboring dark secrets.

A collection of letters from Honore de Balzac to his future wife, Madame Hanska.

Juana by Honore de Balzac.

French playwright and novelist Honore de Balzac is at his best when he is describing the chaotic tumult of big city life in nineteenth-century Europe. In The Brotherhood of Consolation, he focuses on a secret society of people bent on bringing some small measure of goodness into the lives of others by carrying out anonymous acts of charity, philanthropy and assistance.

Honore de Balzac excelled at creating unforgettable characters, but most of his creations were works of pure fiction. Many critics have asserted that the novel Beatrix is a roman a clef depicting the life of the French memoirist George Sand, as well as the larger cultural shift from an era of genteel aristocracy and class stratification to a more democratic way of living.

Honore De Balzac may only have lived for 51 years but his work lives on through such vital classics as Albert Savarus. Written in 1836 and part of a series of novels known as La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy) which parodies and depicts French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy (18151848).

Set in the aftermath of the French Revolution, this short story from the Scenes of Political Life section of Honore de Balzac's The Human Comedy immerses readers in the terrifying tumult of the period. Brimming with mystery and suspense, this is historical fiction at its very best.