(LARGE PRINT EDITION) 1887. Balzac is considered to be the greatest name in the post-Revolutionary literature of France. His writings display a profound knowledge of the human heart, with an extraordinary range of knowledge. A classic example of the French realist novel, which contrasts the social progress of an impoverished but ambitious aristocrat with the tale of a father, whose obsessive love for his daughters leads to his personal and financial ruin. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Monsieur Goriot is one of a disparate group of lodgers at Mademe Vauquer's dingy Parisian boarding house. At first his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are mysteriously reduced he becomes shunned by those around him, and soon his only remaining visitors are his two beautifully dressed daughters. Goriot's fate is intertwined with two other fellow boarders: the young social climber Eugene Rastignac, who sees a way to gain the acceptance and wealth he craves, and the enigmatic figure of Vautrin, who is hiding darker secrets than anyone. Weaving a compelling and panoramic story of love, money, self-sacrifice, corruption, greed and ambition, Old Man Goriot is Balzac's acknowledged masterpiece. A key novel in his Comédie Humaine series, it is a vividly realized portrait of bourgeois Parisian society in the years following the French Revolution.

Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is an ageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living a placid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with his friend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to fine dining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and a dedication to the collection of antiques. When these relatives become aware of the true value of his art collection, however, their sneering contempt for the parasitic Pons rapidly falls away as they struggle to obtain a piece of the weakening man's inheritance. Taking its place in the Human Comedy as a companion to Cousin Bette, the darkly humorous Cousin Pons is among of the last and greatest of Balzac's novels concerning French urban society: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing consideration of human nature.

When the night came, he went to the meeting-place, and quietly let himself be blindfolded. Raw as Honoré de Balzac is famed to be, this daring novella—never before published as a stand-alone book—is perhaps the most outlandish thing he ever wrote. While still concerned with the depiction of the underside of Parisian life, as is most of Balzac’s oeuvre, The Girl with the Golden Eyes considers not the working lives of the poor, but the sex lives of the upper crust. In a nearly boroque rendering with erotically charged details as well as lush and extravagant language, The Girl with the Golden Eyes tells the story of a rich and ruthless young man in nineteenth century Paris caught up in an amorous entanglement with a mysterious beauty. His control slipping, incest, homosexuality, sexual slavery, and violence combine in what was then, and still remains, a shocking and taboo-breaking work. ** The Art of The Novella Series **Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time. From the Trade Paperback edition.

One of Honore de Balzac's most celebrated tales, "The Unknown Masterpiece" is the story of a painter who, depending on one's perspective, is either an abject failure or a transcendental genius--or both. The story, which has served as an inspiration to artists as various as Cezanne, Henry James, Picasso, and New Wave director Jacques Rivette, is, in critic Dore Ashton's words, a "fable of modern art." Published here in a new translation by poet Richard Howard, "The Unknown Masterpiece" appears, as Balzac intended, with "Gambara," a grotesque and tragic novella about a musician undone by his dreams. Honoré De Balzac (1799-1850) is generally credited as the inventor of the modern realistic novel. In more than ninety novels, he set forth French society and life as he saw it. He created a cast of over two thousand individual and identifiable characters, some of whom reappear in different novels. He organized his works into his masterpiece, La Comedie Humaine,which was the final result of his attempt to grasp the whole of society and experience into one varied but unified work. Richard Howard was born in Cleveland in 1929. He is the author of fourteen volumes of poetry and has published more than one hundred fifty translations from the French, including works by Gide, Stendhal, de Beauvoir, Baudelaire, and de Gaulle. Howard received a National Book Award for his translation of Fleurs du mal and a Pulitzer Prize for Untitled Subjects, a collection of poetry.

Finance, fashionable society, and the intrigues of the underworld and the police system form the heart of this powerful novel, which introduces the satanic genius Vautrin, one of the greatest villains in world literature.

Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman Madame de Bargeton, and prepares to forge his way in the glamorous beau monde of Paris. But Lucien has entered a world far more dangerous than he realized, as Madame de Bargeton's reputation becomes compromised and the fickle, venomous denizens of the courts and salons conspire to keep him out of their ranks. Lucien eventually learns that, wherever he goes, talent counts for nothing in comparison to money, intrigue and unscrupulousness. Lost Illusions is one of the greatest novels in the rich procession of the Comedie humaine, Balzac's panoramic social and moral history of his times.

If you have seen Ricky Gervais in 'The Office', you will know how much comedy and pathos occurs in apparently mundane locations. In 'The Lesser Bourgeoisie', Honore de Balzac turns his sharp eye on the intrigues of the white-collar world.Spinster Marie-Jeanne-Brigitte Thuillier has made money from selling her bank business. She dedicates her life to supporting her brother, an attractive but mediocre man with an illegitimate daughter, Celeste.Celeste's mother, Flavie, is a social climber who takes lovers to advance her husband's career - and to find a rich husband for her daughter.The murky waters are further muddied by the arrival of the lawyer Theodose de La Peyrade, who targets the hand of Celeste (and her inheritance).It is all rather unbecoming as the vultures circle around Celeste, and Balzac exposes the greed that exists at this level of French society.If you like office intrigue, try 'The Way We Live Now' by Anthony Trollope.-

Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on the condescending patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philandering Baron Hulot and their daughter Hortense. Already deeply resentful of their wealth, when Bette learns that the man she is in love with plans to marry Hortense, she becomes consumed by the desire to exact her revenge and dedicates herself to the destruction of the Hulot family, plotting their ruin with patient, silent malice. Cousin Bette is a gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, and a brilliant portrayal of the grasping, bourgeois society of 1840s Paris. The culmination of the Comedie humaine, Balzac's epic chronicle of his times, it is one of his greatest triumphs as a novelist.

The Wild Ass's Skin is Honoré de Balzac's 1831 novel that tells the story of a young man, Raphaël de Valentin, who discovers a piece of shagreen, in this case a rough untanned piece of a wild ass's skin, which has the magical property of granting wishes. However the fulfillment of the wisher's desire comes at a cost, after each wish the skin shrinks a little bit and consumes the physical energy of the wisher. "The Wild Ass's Skin" is at once both a work of incredible realism, in the descriptions of Parisian life and culture at the time, and also a work of supernatural fantasy, in the desires that are fulfilled by the wild ass's skin. Balzac uses this fantastical device masterfully to depict the complexity of the human nature in civilized society.

A new translation of one of Balzac’s finest novels, this tale of misguided passion centers on a young aristocrat who falls into a cloaked, coded entanglement with an older countess—a relationship that is upended when he becomes involved with a new lover. A story of impossible and unsatisfied desire, Balzac’s The Lily in the Valley opens with a scene of desire unleashed. Félix de Vandenesse, the shy teenage scion of an aristocratic family, is at a ball, when his eyes are drawn to a beautiful woman in fashionable undress: before he knows what he is doing, he throws himself upon her, covering her bare back with kisses. In shock, she pushes him away. He leaves the party in shame. The woman at the party is Henriette de Mortsauf, married to a much older count. Time passes, and Félix is reintroduced to her. Nothing is said of what transpired, though nothing is forgotten, and a courtship begins whose premise is that Félix will...

Table of Contents List of Works by Genre and Title List of Works in Alphabetical Order Honore de Balzac Biography La Com?die Humaine: Scenes From Private Life: The Ball at Sceaux The Purse Madame Firmiani A Second Home Domestic Peace Paz or The Imaginary Mistress Study of a Woman Another Study of Woman La Grand Breteche (Sequel to "Another Study of Woman") Albert Savarus Letters of Two Brides A Daughter of Eve A Woman of Thirty The Deserted Woman La Grenadiere The Message Gobseck The Marriage Contract A Start in Life Modeste Mignon Beatrix Honorine Colonel Chabert The Atheist's Mass The Commission in Lunacy Pierre Grassou Scenes From Provincial Life: Ursule Mirouet or Ursula Eugenie Grandet The Celibates: - Pierrette - The Vicar of Tours - The Two Brothers or A Bachelor's Establishment Parisians in the Country: - The Illustrious Gaudissart - The Muse of the Department The Jealousies of a Country Town - An Old Maid - The Collection of Antiquities The Lily of the Valley Lost Illusions (Les Illusions perdues) *- The Two Poets - A Distinguished Provincial at Paris - Eve and David * Scenes From Parisian Life Scenes from a Courtesan's Life - Esther Happy - What Love Costs an Old Man - The End of Evil Ways - Vautrin's Last Avatar A Prince of Bohemia A Man of Business Gaudissart II Unconscious Comedians The Thirteen - Ferragus - The Duchesse de Langeais - The Girl with the Golden Eyes Father Goriot The Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau The Firm of Nucingen The Secrets of a Princess Bureaucracy or The Government Clerks Sarrasine Facino Cane Poor Relations - Cousin Betty - Cousin Pons The Lesser Bourgeoisie or The Middle Classes Scenes From Political Life An Historical Mystery or The Gondreville Mystery An Episode Under the Terror The Brotherhood of Consolation or The Seamy Side of History - Madame de la Chanterie - Initiated or The Initiate Z. Marcas The Deputy of Arcis or The Member for Arcis Scenes From Military Life The Chouans A Passion in the Desert Scenes From Country Life The Country Doctor The Village Rector or The Country Parson Sons of the Soil or The Peasantry Philosophical Studies The Magic Skin (La Peau de chagrin) The Alkahest or The Quest of the Absolute Christ in Flanders Melmoth Reconciled The Hidden Masterpiece The Hated Son Gambara Massimilla Doni Juana or The Maranas Farewell The Recruit or The Conscript El Verdugo A Drama on the Seashore or A Seaside Tragedy The Red Inn The Elixir of Life Maitre Cornelius Catherine De Medici - The Calvinist Martyr - The Ruggieri's Secret - The Two Dreams Louis Lambert The Exiles Seraphita Analytical Studies The Physiology of Marriage Novels: Adieu Beatrix The Country Doctor Petty Troubles of Married Life Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan Vendetta Short Stories: At the Sign of the Cat & Racket Domestic Peace Droll Stories Volume 1 Droll Stories Volume 2 Droll Stories Volume 3 Folk-Tales of Napoleon, The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder A Street of Paris and Its Inhabitant Plays: Mercadet: A Comedy In Three Acts Pamela Giraud: A Play In Five Acts The Resources of Quinola The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts Vautrin: A Drama in Five Acts

Honoré de Balzac's short story ´The illustrious Gaudissaart´ reveals the arrogance and prejudice on both sides of the city-country divide.When a slick salesman from the big city visits the provincial town of Vouvray, he is confident that the locals will buy anything. But Gaudissart's apparent belief in the doctrine of Saint-Simonianism, which teaches that industrialisation will empty the countryside and create a Utopian society of workers, riles a local man named Vernier.He tricks him into selling items to his unstable neighbour Margaritis, who convinces the salesman to buy two non-existent wine barrels.This vindictive practical joke then escalates into legal action and a dramatic duel ensues. For more insights into life in 1830s Europe, try Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Ruth' and 'North and South'.-

Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that make up Balzac's History of the Thirteen are concerned in part with the activities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secret society in nineteenth-century France. While the deeds of 'The Thirteen' remain frequently in the background, however, the individual novels are concerned with exploring various forms of desire. A tragic love story, Ferragus depicts a marriage destroyed by suspicion, revelation and misunderstanding. The Duchess de Langeais explores the anguish that results when a society coquette tries to seduce a heroic ex-soldier, while The Girl with the Golden Eyes offers a frank consideration of desire and sexuality. Together, these works provide a firm and fascinating foundation for Balzac's many later portrayals of Parisian life in his great novel-cycle The Human Comedy.

An NYRB Classics Original Characters from every corner of society and all walks of life—lords and ladies, businessmen and military men, poor clerks,  unforgiving moneylenders, aspiring politicians, artists, actresses, swindlers, misers, parasites, sexual adventurers, crackpots,  and more—move through the pages of The Human Comedy, Balzac’s multivolume magnum opus, an interlinked chronicle of modernity in all its splendor and squalor. The Human Comedy includes the great roomy novels that have exercised such a sway over Balzac’s many literary inheritors, from Dostoyevsky and Henry James to Marcel Proust; it also contains an array of short fictions in which Balzac is at his most concentrated and forceful. Nine of these, all newly translated, appear in this volume, and together they provide an unequaled overview of a great writer’s obsessions and art. Here are “The Duchesse de Langeais,” “A Passion in the Desert,” and “Sarrasine”; tales of madness, illicit passion, ill-gotten gains, and crime. What unifies them, Peter Brooks points out in his introduction, is an incomparable storyteller’s fascination with the power of storytelling, while throughout we also detect what Proust so admired: the “mysterious circulation of blood and desire.”