Balzac, Honoré de (1799-1850)

French writer. He was one of the major novelists of the 19th century. His first success was Les Chouans/The Chouans, inspired by Walter Scott. This was the beginning of the long series of novels La Comédie humaine/The Human Comedy which includes Eugénie Grandet (1833), Le Père Goriot (1834), and Cousine Bette (1846). He also wrote the Rabelaisian Contes drolatiques/Ribald Tales (1833).

Born in Tours, Balzac studied law and worked as a notary's clerk in Paris before turning to literature. His first attempts included tragedies such as Cromwell and novels published under a pseudonym with no great success. A venture in printing and publishing 1825-28 involved him in a lifelong web of debt. His patroness, Madame de Berny, figures in Le Lys dans la vallée/The Lily in the Valley (1836). Balzac intended his major work La Comédie humaine to comprise 143 volumes, depicting every aspect of society in 19th-century France, of which he completed 80. Titles and characters include Cousin Pons (1847); and the doctor of Le Médicin de la campagne/The Country Doctor (1833), the great businessman of La Maison de Nucingen/The House of Nucingen (1838), and the cleric of Le Curé de village/The Village Parson (1839). Balzac corresponded constantly with the Polish countess Evelina Hanska after meeting her 1833, and they married four months before his death in Paris. He was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris.