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.

One of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's great Comedie Humaine, Eugenie Grandet (1833) is a story of family conflict, unrequited love and self-sacrifice set against the aftermath of the French Revolution.

This is the tragic story of a father whose obsessive love for his two daughters leads to his financial and personal ruin. It is set against the background of a whole society driven by social ambition and lust for money. The detailed descriptions of both affluence and squalor in the Paris of 1819 are an integral part of the drama played out by a wide range of characters, including the sinister but

Cousin Bette (1846) is considered to be Balzac's last great novel, and a key work in his Human Comedy. Set in the Paris of the 1830s and 1840s, it is a complex tale of the devastating effect of violent jealousy and sexual passion. Against a meticulously detailed backdrop of a post-Napoleonic France struggling with massive industrial and economic change, Balzac's characters span many classes of ...

Balzac's radiant story recounts the history of Colonel Chabert, a disenfranchised hero of the Napoleonic wars. Left for dead on the battlefield of Eylau, Chabert has spent years as an amnesiac in an asylum. The novel begins with his return to the life he left behind.

Eugene wants to get on in the world. So he has come to Paris. When he finds a place to stay at a shabby boarding house, he sees a potential plan to make a fortune: the two beautiful, aristocratic women who mysteriously come at night to visit the lonely old lodger Goriot. Could they bring him the status and acceptance he craves?

In a gloomy house in provincial Saumur lives the miser Grandet with his wife and daughter, Eugenie, whose lives are stifled and overshadowed by his obsession with gold. But when the arrival of her handsome cousin, Charles, awakens Eugenie's desires, her passion brings her into a violent collision with her father that results in tragedy for all.

One of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's great Comedie Humaine, 'Eugenie Grandet' (1833) is a story of family conflict, unrequited love and self-sacrifice set against the aftermath of the French Revolution.

A tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, and a portrayal of the bourgeois society of 1840s Paris. It features poor, plain spinster Bette who is compelled to survive on the patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philandering Baron Hulot and their daughter Hortense.

This edition of one of Balzac's best known novels is based on a translation by Burton Raffel.

Intertwines the mythic and the modern in ways that would prove influential to science fiction. Like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , this novel bridges the gap that separates alchemy and magic from the practice and problems of science. It features notes, appendices, and a critical introduction.

A hypnotic story of hatred, revenge and catastrophe in which Cousin Bette exacts a terrible price from the rich relations who use and humiliate her. This book portrays the world of post-Napoleonic France, where commercial greed and sexual debauchery are rampant among a demoralized ruling class.

Pons is an ageing musician, and believes that fame has fallen to nothing. Living with his friend, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to fine dining in the company relatives, and a dedication to the collection of antiques. This novel concerns French urban society: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing consideration of human nature.

Twelve stories are representative of the tragic, melodramatic, sentimental, pathetic, and comic aspects of Balzac's art and testify to his keen sense of irony when observing the human condition.