Honoré de Balzac

Lore & Background

As an infant he was sent to a wet nurse, and later spent four years away from home with his sister Laure. At age ten he was sent to the Oratorian grammar school in Vendôme, where he studied for seven years; his father gave him little spending money, making him the object of ridicule. Balzac had difficulty adapting to the rote style of learning and was frequently sent to a punishment cell called the 'alcove', where he read every book he could find. He often fell ill, and the headmaster eventually contacted his family about a 'sort of a coma'. After studies, he trained in law offices but despaired of the profession and announced his intention to become a writer.

Reader's Guide

Balzac's significance lies in his role as a founder of realism in European literature, achieved through his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society. His novel sequence La Comédie humaine is a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life and is considered his magnum opus. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters, even lesser ones being complex and morally ambiguous, and for imbuing inanimate objects with character, particularly the city of Paris. His writing influenced many famous writers, including Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, as well as filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Henry James called him 'really the father of us all.' Many of Balzac's works have been made into films, and his work has served as a framework for other writers. His legacy endures as a foundational figure in the development of the modern novel.

Did You Know?

• Balzac attempted suicide on a bridge over the river Loire during his time with private tutors in Paris.
• His first project was a libretto for a comic opera called Le Corsaire, based on Lord Byron's The Corsair.
• He wrote two pamphlets in support of primogeniture and the Society of Jesus.