In a gloomy house in provincial Saumur lives the miser Grandet with his wife and daughter, Eug ni...

'This is as much a mystery as the Immaculate Conception, which of itself must make a doctor an un...

Monsieur Goriot is one of a disparate group of lodgers at Mademe Vauquer's dingy Parisian boardin...

Philippe and Joseph Bridau are two extremely different brothers. The elder, Philippe, is a superf...

Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is an ageing musician whose brief fame h...

Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make hi...

In 1842, eight years before his death, Balzac described Ursule Mirouet as the masterpiece of all ...

One of the greatest French novelists, Balzac was also an accomplished writer of shorter fiction. ...

Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that make up Balzac's History of the Thirteen a...

Eug ne wants to get on in the world. So he has come to Paris, where the streets teem with chancer...

Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and na ve, but highly ambitious. Failing to make hi...

Balzac is concerned with the choice between ruthless self-gratification and asceticism, dissipati...