"Another Study of Woman" is a narrative hovering between a short story and a novella in terms of length, extracted from Honore de Balzac's multi-volume masterpiece The Human Comedy. At a private dinner party, guests warmed by the flush of fine food and drink begin to banter about the qualities and attributes that characterize the ideal woman. Gradually, the guests begin to reminisce about their own experiences and encounters with perfect and not-so-perfect...

From the great French novelist comes this long-unavailable collection of tales in the tradition of Boccaccio's Decameron. Balzac's Contes Drolatiques, or Droll Stories, were originally published in three volumes in the 1830s. Set in medieval Europe, these stories were Balzac's attempt to write in the great tradition of Rabelais and Boccaccio, to render the Middle Ages with a touch of raunchy humor, and to provide a delightful portrait of medieval...

Excerpt: "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. At this period he was forty years old, with gray hair of so pleasing a shade that women might at a pinch fall in love with it for it softened...

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life is one of the last great works completed by Balzac for his huge novel series entitled The Human Comedy. Sections of this book, in various groupings and with various titles. It eventually settled into the four sections found in the present edition. At the end of that book, Lucien de Rubempré (born Lucien Chardon), a young provincial poet with great ambitions but feeble moral will, was heading for Paris in the company...

Gobseck, an 1830 novella by French author Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), appears in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Gobseck first appeared in outline form in La Mode in March 1830 under the title l'Usurier (The Usurer), and then in August 1830 in the periodical Le Voleur. The actual novella appeared in a volume published by Mame-Delaunay under the title Les Dangers de l'inconduite. This novella would...

Le Père Goriot is widely considered Balzac's most important novel. This is the story of the relationship between a doting father and his two adult daughters. Blinded by his love for his children, Père Goriot cannot see their flaws and gives them everything they ask for even though the giving destroys him. A cautionary tale about the dangers of placing society and money before all else.

Though a relatively short story, A Man of Business is an important component of Honore de Balzac's vast story cycle The Human Comedy, involving many of the recurring characters from the series and tying up a number of loose ends. As a fete thrown at the home of his mistress begins to wind down, Cardot invites the lingering merrymakers to settle around the table and begins telling a story about a clever debt-collection scheme. Honore de Balzac (20...

A Daughter of Eve is a short novel wriiten by Honore de Balzac. This short novel, part of the Scenes of Private Life section of Honore de Balzac's vast masterpiece The Human Comedy, includes the first appearances of key characters who return later in the series. A Daughter of Eve is a tale in which seemingly innocent peccadilloes soon spiral into an inescapable web of intrigue, fraud, and lust. Honore de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was...

Partagez l'intimité des jeunes mariées avec Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées de Balzac. Ce roman épistolaire captivant dévoile les pensées intérieures de deux amies fraîchement mariées à travers leurs lettres échangées. Découvrez les joies, les doutes et les défis de ces nouvelles épouses alors qu'elles naviguent dans les eaux tumultueuses du mariage et de la société du 19ᵉ siècle. Dans ce chef-d'œuvre littéraire, Balzac explore...

Une édition de référence du Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu de Honoré de Balzac, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques. « Enfin, il y a quelque chose de plus vrai que tout ceci, c'est que la pratique et l'observation sont tout chez un peintre, et que si le raisonnement et la poésie se querellent avec les brosses, on arrive au doute comme le bonhomme, qui est aussi fou que peintre. Peintre sublime, il a eu le malheur de naître...