Pere 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, Pere Goriot can not 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.

Honora de Balzac is considered the founder of social realism. Balzac was the first writer to write about the all social levels of the social scene in France. His vast collection of works encompasses the Restoration period and the July Monarchy. La Comedie Humaine was written between 1799 and 1850. This collection contains 95 novels, stories, and essays. The Unknown Masterpiece is a short story first published in the newspaper L"Artiste with the title "Maitre Frenhofer." It was later part of the La Comedie Humaine. The story begins with young Nicolas Poussin visiting the painter Porbus in his...

It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning which gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the first time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless sky overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by two spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue de Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the newly opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The owner of the carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair on his sallow temples, turning gray...

Entering Nemours by the road to Paris, we cross the canal du Loing, the steep banks of which serve the double purpose of ramparts to the fields and of picturesque promenades for the inhabitants of that pretty little town. Since 1830 several houses had unfortunately been built on the farther side of the bridge. If this sort of suburb increases, the place will lose its present aspect of graceful originality. In 1829, however, both sides of the road were clear, and the master of the post route, a tall, stout man about sixty years of age, sitting one fine autumn morning at the highest part...

Honore de Balzac is considered the founder of social realism. Balzac was the first writer to write about the all social levels on the social scene in France. His vast collection of works encompasses the Restoration period and the July Monarchy.

Honora de Balzac is considered the founder of social realism. Balzac was the first writer to write about all social levels of the social scene in France. His vast collection of works encompasses the Restoration period and the July Monarchy. La Comedie Humaine was written between 1799 and 1850. This collection contains 95 novels, stories, and essays. Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau can be found in the Scenes from Parisian life (Scenes de la vie parisienne) in La Comedie Humaine. Cesar Birotteau, the doomed capitalist is the main character in this work.

Balzac's literary output began with chronicles and sketches on widely varied social and artistic topics. The journals to which he contributed were increasingly looking for short fiction, which Balzac was able to provide. A collection Scenes de la vie privee (Scenes from Private Life) came out in 1829, and was well received: these were tales told with a journalistic eye which looked into the fabric of modern life and did not shun social and political realities. Balzac had found a distinctive voice.

'Who is going to marry Eugenie Grandet?'
This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugenie Grandet (1833), one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's Comedie humaine. The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugenie's cousin Charles, recently orphaned and penniless. Eugenie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, brings her into direct conflict with her father, whose cunning and financial success are matched...