Balzac

The great event of the year 1843 was Balzac's visit in the summer to Saint Petersburg, where Madame Hanska had been staying since the preceding autumn. He had hoped to go there...

It is time something was said now about Balzac's last dramatic compositions. Since the Gaite fiasco, in 1843, no other theatre had been brought up to the point of producing a fu...

One has little doubt in deciding that, of the two spurs which goaded Balzac's labours, his desire for wealth acted more persistently and energetically than his desire for glory....

The historical novel that Balzac had set himself to write was the _Chouans_, this name being given to the Vendee Royalists who, under the leadership of the Chevalier de Nougared...

Sometimes, notwithstanding his affected indifference, Balzac was provoked by the pleasantries, the fleerings and floutings of satirists and caricaturists, who, finding so many w...

By the agreement which farmed out Balzac's future production, Werdet was implicitly sacrificed. The final breach did not occur until the middle of 1837, but no fresh book was gi...

The Rue des Batailles, whither Balzac removed his household goods in 1834, was one of those old landmarks of Paris which have disappeared in the opening up and beautifying of th...

It happened that Honore's enlistment in the army of _litterateurs_ coincided with considerable changes in his parents' circumstances. His father had just been retired on a pensi...

The aim of an author whose writings are intended to please must be ethical as well as aesthetic, if he respects himself and his readers. He wishes the pleasure he can give to do...

For all his aristocratic name, Honore de Balzac was not of noble birth. The nobiliary particule he did not add to his signature until the year 1830. In his birth certificate we...

If Balzac's intimates, careful of his future, had besought him to jot down in a diary the detailed doings of his every-day life, with a confession of his thoughts, feelings, and...

The abode that Balzac chose, on coming back to live within the city walls, was not far from the Rue de Chaillot which had been his address before he removed to Sevres. It was si...

Though fertile in incidents, the year of 1845 was, from a literary point of view, more barren than any in Balzac's past career, exception, of course, made for the time lost duri...

Balzac's influence during his lifetime was, with but few exceptions, exercised outside his own, novelist's profession. The sphere in which it made itself chiefly felt was that o...

The idea of joining his separate books together and forming them into a coherent whole was one that matured slowly in Balzac's mind. Its genesis is to be found in his first coll...

The condition of French society in the early half of the nineteenth century--the period covered by Balzac's novels--may be compared to that of a people endeavouring to recover t...

It may be affirmed, without thereby disparaging the _Comedie Humaine_, that Balzac's personality is even more interesting than his work; and this is a sufficient excuse for retu...