The Duchess of Langeais

By Honoré de Balzac

In The Duchesse of Langeais, Honore De Balzac tells us the story of an ill-fated love affair between a Parisian socialite and a Napoleonic war hero. The depth of character is astonishing and the writing superb.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
• Release date: Jan 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781625582737

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Regarded as one of the key figures of French and European literature, Balzac’s realist approach to writing would influence Charles Dickens, Émile Zola, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, and Karl Marx. With a precocious attitude and fierce intellect, Balzac struggled first in school and then in business before dedicating himself to the pursuit of writing as both an art and a profession. His distinctly industrious work routine—he spent hours each day writing furiously by hand and made extensive edits during the publication process—led to a prodigious output of dozens of novels, stories, plays, and novellas. La Comédie humaine, Balzac’s most famous work, is a sequence of 91 finished and 46 unfinished stories, novels, and essays with which he attempted to realistically and exhaustively portray every aspect of French society during the early-nineteenth century.