Honoré de Balzac

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Standard Name: Balzac, Honoré de
Used Form: Honore de Balzac
Coloured photograph or daguerrotype of Honoré de Balzac by Louis-Auguste Bisson, 1842. Balzac stands in a pose of sturdy defiance, his white shirt open and an open palm to his breast. He has a small moustache and thick page-boy-style hair.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Charlotte Yonge
During her lifetime CY was ranked as a serious novelist with Austen , Trollope , Balzac , and Zola . Contemporaries like Louisa Alcott , Margaret Oliphant , Ellen Wood , and Rhoda Broughton made...
Literary responses Ellen Wood
Charles Wood points this out: such a review was rare, and it directed the whole English-speaking world to the work fortunate enough to gain its notice.
Wood, C. W. Memorials of Mrs. Henry Wood. Third, R. Bentley and Son, 1895.
245
Written by Samuel Lucas , then editor of...
Literary responses Dorothy Whipple
A reader at Curtis Brown praised DW 's very shrewd and natural gift of depicting her middle-class characters, while Lord Gorell at John Murray wrote: Much her best work and the former was good.
qtd. in
Whipple, Dorothy. Random Commentary. Michael Joseph, 1966.
23
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Frances Trollope
FT 's political conservatism affected her judgements of literature as well as politics. She forcefully expresses her dislike for republicanism, denounces freedom of the press as the most awful engine that Providence has permitted the...
Literary responses Olive Schreiner
The book elicited strong reactions, most of them positive. It was highly praised by Philip Kent , who wrote a long article about it instead of his usual shorter reviews in Life, a weekly...
Reception Sappho
This drew on a female type established in the bohemian fiction of Honoré de Balzac , Eugène Sue , and others. Daudet's novel was the source of a play by Clyde Fitch which opened on...
Fictionalization George Sand
GS was portrayed as Mademoiselle de Touches in Balzac 's novel Béatrix, a fictionalized account of the love affair between Franz Liszt and Marie d'Agoult .
Jordan, Ruth. George Sand: A Biographical Portrait. Taplinger, 1976.
170-1
politics George Sand
The meeting of Aurore Dudevant (later GS ) with Sandeau coincided with the end of the Three Glorious Days when Charles X abdicated, leaving the throne for his nephew Louis Philippe of Orléans . In...
Friends, Associates George Sand
It was while working for the Figaro that she met Honoré de Balzac and the journalist Henri de Latouche . Another writer who became a friend and mentor to her was critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve .
Jack, Belinda. George Sand: A Woman’s Life Writ Large. Vintage, 2001.
174-6
Jaeger, Muriel. Experimental Lives from Cato to George Sand. G. Bell and Sons, 1932.
192
Literary responses George Sand
The novel met with high praise from Balzac , and a critic at the Revue des Deux Mondes thought it better than anything by Germaine de Staël . These two knew the author's gender, but...
Textual Features Dorothy Richardson
In addition to her chosen themes, DR also charts the development of female consciousness through her literary techniques, which strongly disrupt gender, generic, and linguistic conventions. In her 1938 foreword to Pilgrimage, she recalls...
Textual Production Dorothy Richardson
In her correspondence Richardson addresses a great range of topics, including her own varied reading. She comments on women writers from Julian of Norwich through Jane Austen , Emily and Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot
Education Ouida
Her father was also important in her education, encouraging her interest in history, politics (from a liberal standpoint), and the writings of Balzac and Stendhal . She wrote in an early diary, I must study...
Literary responses Ouida
The Athenæum criticized this novel for mock eloquence
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2016 (16 June 1866): 797
and thought anyone choosing to read it was making a very bad use of their freedom.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2016 (16 June 1866): 798
In...
Textual Production Mary Russell Mitford
During the same year she worked on translating Balzac for young English readers, a scheme suggested to her by her discussions with Elizabeth Barrett Browning about French fiction.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research, 1992.
116: 196

Timeline

1827: French novelist Honoré de Balzac began publishing...

Writing climate item

1827

French novelist Honoré de Balzac began publishing his series of ninety-one interconnected novels and stories, the Comédie humaine.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.

1833: Honoré de Balzac published his novel Eugénie...

Writing climate item

1833

Honoré de Balzac published his novel Eugénie Grandet.
Petit Larousse, illustré, 1980. Librairie Larousse, 1980.

1834: Honoré de Balzac's novel Esther Heureuse,...

Writing climate item

1834

Honoré de Balzac 's novel Esther Heureuse, part of his Comédie humaine, appeared, introducing those who were able to read it in French to an early representation of l'amour sapphique or lesbianism.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. “Introduction”. The Rebel of the Family, edited by Deborah T. Meem, Broadview, 2002, pp. 9-18.
11
Linton, Eliza Lynn. “Introduction”. The Rebel of the Family, edited by Deborah T. Meem, Broadview, 2002, pp. 9-18.
11
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

1846: Honoré de Balzac published La Cousine Be...

Writing climate item

1846

Honoré de Balzac published La Cousine Bette.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.

Texts

Balzac, Honoré de. La Comédie humaine. Furné, 1849, 17 vols.