Honoré de Balzac

French novelist and playwright (1799–1850)
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Honoré de Balzac (French pronunciation: ​[ɔnɔʁe də balzak]; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His most famous work is La Comédie humaine. It is a collection of novels and short stories and is about French life after 1815. La Peau de chagrin (1831), Eugénie Grandet (1833) and Le Père Goriot (1835) are some of the most famous works from this collection. His books influenced many other people such as Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe.

Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac on an 1842 daguerreotype
by Louis-Auguste Bisson
Born20 May 1799
Died18 August 1850 (age 51)
Paris, France
Occupation(s)Novelist, playwright
SpouseEwelina Hańska

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

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

Other websites

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