Honore De Balzac

Ellen Marriage

The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Excerpt from The Quest of the Absolute: La Recherche De L'absolu It is not, of course, that a knowledge of Balzac's own peculiarities adds anything to the sense of the artistic eminence of these two stories. That would be clear if we knew nothing whatever about the other part of the matter. But it cannot be regarded as uninteresting that we should thus know the secret of the juria, the 'nobler gust' of sympathy and enjoyment with which the writer, consciously or unconsciously, must have set about these two great, and in his own work, almost incomparable things. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

La Recherche de L'Absolu (Classic Reprint)

The Quest of the Absolute

Honoré de Balzac

Katharine Prescott Wormeley

History of the Thirteen is a trilogy written by Honoré de Balzac: Ferragus is the first part, the second is La Duchesse de Langeais and the third is The Girl with the Golden Eyes. The story is set around the year 1820. Auguste de Maulincour, a young cavalry officer, walking in a Parisian district of ill repute, sees from afar a young married woman, Clemence, with whom he is secretly in love. In the days that follow his arrival to Paris, Auguste uncovers the secrets of powerful and mysterious people and escapes several assassination attempts.

Ferragus, The Duchesse de Langeais, The Girl with the Golden Eyes

History of the Thirteen

Excerpt from The Quest of the Absolute: La Recherche De L'absolu The volume of the old edition of the Comedie Humaine, which opened with La Recherche de l'Absolu, together with that generally entitled Les Marana, contains the cream and flower of Balzac as a story-teller; and the first excels the second in showing the fiery heat and glow of the author's imagination. Its principal constituent, the title story, is large enough for a novel by itself, and is so given here. The chief of the minor elements, Le Chef-d' uvre inconnu, has seemed to some the actual masterpiece of the author. Jesus-Christ en Flandre, like some others of Balzac's short stories, intimates an intention in him of emulating the contes fantastiques, half-humorous and half-romantic, half-Voltairian and half-mystical, which were so much in favour in 1830. It is, I think, quite the best of them, and it shows its author's great manner in more points than one. But just as at the end of L' Elixir de longue Fie we want the touch of Hoffmann rather than that of Balzac; so here we find something that is not quite perfect, that wants another hand. Even as it is, we would not change for anything else, but we have the sense that the same thing by another person might have been even better. Melmoth reconcilie, an inferior thing in itself, has in the same way a sort of special and adventitious interest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

La Recherche De L'absolu (Classic Reprint)

George Saintsbury

La Recherche de L'absolu

Honore de Balzac

The Magic Skin - La Peau de Chagrin by Honore de Balzac. Translated by Ellen Marriage. La Peau de chagrin, The Magic Skin or The Wild Ass's Skin) is an 1831 novel by French novelist and playwright Honore de Balzac (1799–1850). Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of shagreen that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of his physical energy. La Peau de chagrin belongs to the Etudes philosophiques group of Balzac's sequence of novels, La Comédie humaine.Before the book was completed, Balzac created excitement about it by publishing a series of articles and story fragments in several Parisian journals. Although he was five months late in delivering the manuscript, he succeeded in generating sufficient interest that the novel sold out instantly upon its publication. A second edition, which included a series of twelve other "philosophical tales", was released one month later.Although the novel uses fantastic elements, its main focus is a realistic portrayal of the excesses of bourgeois materialism. Balzac's renowned attention to detail is used to describe a gambling house, an antique shop, a royal banquet, and other locales. He also includes details from his own life as a struggling writer, placing the main character in a home similar to the one he occupied at the start of his literary career. The central theme of La Peau de chagrin is the conflict between desire and longevity. The magic skin represents the owner's life-force, which is depleted through every expression of will, especially when it is employed for the acquisition of power. Ignoring a caution from the shopkeeper who offers him the skin, the protagonist greedily surrounds himself with wealth, only to find himself miserable and decrepit at the story's end.La Peau de chagrin firmly established Balzac as a writer of significance in France. His social circle widened significantly, and he was sought eagerly by publishers for future projects. The book served as the catalyst for a series of letters he exchanged with a Polish baroness named Ewelina Hanska, who later became his wife. It also inspired Giselher Klebe's opera Die todlichen Wunsche.

La Peau de Chagrin

The Magic Skin

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

(Grandeur Et Decadence de Cesar Birotteau)

The Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

Considered to be one of Balzac's most important works, Old Goriot, or Pre Goriot, is the story of its title character Goriot; a mysterious criminal-in-hiding named Vautrin; and a naive law student named Eugne de Rastignac. We are introduced to the characters at Maison Vauquer, a boarding house owned by the widow Madame Vauquer. Central to the theme of the book is the struggle to achieve upper-class status in society. Rastignac is eager to achieve this upper-class standing but is unfamiliar to the ways of Parisian society. Vautrin tries to convince Rastignac to pursue an unmarried woman named Victorine, a dubious suggestion which involves the disposal of her brother who blocks the woman's fortune. The failings to achieve this upper-class status are exemplified by Goriot who has bankrupted himself to support his two well-married daughters, yet they reject him. A classic and tragic story, Old Goriot is one of the most pivotal works in Balzac's sweeping novel sequence La Comdie Humaine, which endeavors to depict the effects of society on the entirety of the human condition.

Old Goriot (Pere Goriot)

This outstanding French realist novel contrasts the social progress of an impoverished but ambitious aristocrat with that of a father whose obsessive love leads to personal and financial ruin. "The modern King Lear." ? Leslie Stephen.

Pere Goriot

James Waring

Honoré de Balzac (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.In this book:Cousin BettyClara BellScenes from a Courtesan's LifeThe Elixir of LifeMassimilla DoniLouis LambertTranslator: James WaringTranslator: Clara Bell

By the French author, who, along with Flaubert, is generally regarded as a founding-father of realism in European fiction. His large output of works, collectively entitled The Human Comedy (La Comedie Humaine), consists of 95 finished works (stories, novels and essays) and 48 unfinished works. His stories are an attempt to comprehend and depict the realities of life in contemporary bourgeois France. They are placed in a variety of settings, with characters reappearing in multiple stories. Balzac entered the mainstream with The Magic Skin (La Peau de Chagrin) (1831), a fable-like tale delineating the excesses and vanities of contemporary life. Includes a biography of the author.

Ellen Marriage

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