https://archive.bookfrom.net/ ru Honoré de Balzac - Read Online Free Books Archive DataLife Engine https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48076-pere_goriot.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48076-pere_goriot.html
(LARGE PRINT EDITION) 1887. Balzac is considered to be the greatest name in the post-Revolutionary literature of France. His writings display a profound knowledge of the human heart, with an extraordinary range of knowledge. A classic example of the French realist novel, which contrasts the social progress of an impoverished but ambitious aristocrat with the tale of a father, whose obsessive love for his daughters leads to his personal and financial ruin. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.]]> Wed, 14 Sep 1977 21:47:48 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48072-old_man_goriot.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48072-old_man_goriot.html
Monsieur Goriot is one of a disparate group of lodgers at Mademe Vauquer's dingy Parisian boarding house. At first his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are mysteriously reduced he becomes shunned by those around him, and soon his only remaining visitors are his two beautifully dressed daughters. Goriot's fate is intertwined with two other fellow boarders: the young social climber Eugene Rastignac, who sees a way to gain the acceptance and wealth he craves, and the enigmatic figure of Vautrin, who is hiding darker secrets than anyone. Weaving a compelling and panoramic story of love, money, self-sacrifice, corruption, greed and ambition, Old Man Goriot is Balzac's acknowledged masterpiece. A key novel in his Comédie Humaine series, it is a vividly realized portrait of bourgeois Parisian society in the years following the French Revolution.]]> Wed, 14 Sep 1977 21:47:48 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48079-cousin_pons.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48079-cousin_pons.html
Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is an ageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living a placid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with his friend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to fine dining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and a dedication to the collection of antiques. When these relatives become aware of the true value of his art collection, however, their sneering contempt for the parasitic Pons rapidly falls away as they struggle to obtain a piece of the weakening man's inheritance. Taking its place in the Human Comedy as a companion to Cousin Bette, the darkly humorous Cousin Pons is among of the last and greatest of Balzac's novels concerning French urban society: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing consideration of human nature.]]> Wed, 14 Sep 1977 21:47:48 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48080-the_girl_with_the_golden_eyes.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48080-the_girl_with_the_golden_eyes.html
When the night came, he went to the meeting-place, and quietly let himself be blindfolded. Raw as Honoré de Balzac is famed to be, this daring novella—never before published as a stand-alone book—is perhaps the most outlandish thing he ever wrote. While still concerned with the depiction of the underside of Parisian life, as is most of Balzac’s oeuvre, The Girl with the Golden Eyes considers not the working lives of the poor, but the sex lives of the upper crust. In a nearly boroque rendering with erotically charged details as well as lush and extravagant language, The Girl with the Golden Eyes tells the story of a rich and ruthless young man in nineteenth century Paris caught up in an amorous entanglement with a mysterious beauty. His control slipping, incest, homosexuality, sexual slavery, and violence combine in what was then, and still remains, a shocking and taboo-breaking work.
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The Art of The Novella Series **Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time. From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> Wed, 14 Sep 1977 21:47:48 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48081-the_unknown_masterpiece.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48081-the_unknown_masterpiece.html
One of Honore de Balzac's most celebrated tales, "The Unknown Masterpiece" is the story of a painter who, depending on one's perspective, is either an abject failure or a transcendental genius--or both. The story, which has served as an inspiration to artists as various as Cezanne, Henry James, Picasso, and New Wave director Jacques Rivette, is, in critic Dore Ashton's words, a "fable of modern art." 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. Honoré De Balzac (1799-1850) is generally credited as the inventor of the modern realistic novel. In more than ninety novels, he set forth French society and life as he saw it. He created a cast of over two thousand individual and identifiable characters, some of whom reappear in different novels. He organized his works into his masterpiece, La Comedie Humaine,which was the final result of his attempt to grasp the whole of society and experience into one varied but unified work. Richard Howard was born in Cleveland in 1929. He is the author of fourteen volumes of poetry and has published more than one hundred fifty translations from the French, including works by Gide, Stendhal, de Beauvoir, Baudelaire, and de Gaulle. Howard received a National Book Award for his translation of Fleurs du mal and a Pulitzer Prize for Untitled Subjects, a collection of poetry.]]> Wed, 14 Sep 1977 21:47:48 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48078-a_harlot_high_and_low.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48078-a_harlot_high_and_low.html
Finance, fashionable society, and the intrigues of the underworld and the police system form the heart of this powerful novel, which introduces the satanic genius Vautrin, one of the greatest villains in world literature.]]> Wed, 14 Sep 1977 21:47:48 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48073-lost_illusions.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48073-lost_illusions.html
Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman Madame de Bargeton, and prepares to forge his way in the glamorous beau monde of Paris. But Lucien has entered a world far more dangerous than he realized, as Madame de Bargeton's reputation becomes compromised and the fickle, venomous denizens of the courts and salons conspire to keep him out of their ranks. Lucien eventually learns that, wherever he goes, talent counts for nothing in comparison to money, intrigue and unscrupulousness. Lost Illusions is one of the greatest novels in the rich procession of the Comedie humaine, Balzac's panoramic social and moral history of his times.]]> Wed, 14 Sep 1977 21:47:48 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/659860-the_lesser_bourgeoisie.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/659860-the_lesser_bourgeoisie.html
If you have seen Ricky Gervais in 'The Office', you will know how much comedy and pathos occurs in apparently mundane locations. In 'The Lesser Bourgeoisie', Honore de Balzac turns his sharp eye on the intrigues of the white-collar world.Spinster Marie-Jeanne-Brigitte Thuillier has made money from selling her bank business. She dedicates her life to supporting her brother, an attractive but mediocre man with an illegitimate daughter, Celeste.Celeste's mother, Flavie, is a social climber who takes lovers to advance her husband's career - and to find a rich husband for her daughter.The murky waters are further muddied by the arrival of the lawyer Theodose de La Peyrade, who targets the hand of Celeste (and her inheritance).It is all rather unbecoming as the vultures circle around Celeste, and Balzac exposes the greed that exists at this level of French society.If you like office intrigue, try 'The Way We Live Now' by Anthony Trollope.-]]> Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:36:26 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48074-cousin_bette.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48074-cousin_bette.html
Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on the condescending patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philandering Baron Hulot and their daughter Hortense. Already deeply resentful of their wealth, when Bette learns that the man she is in love with plans to marry Hortense, she becomes consumed by the desire to exact her revenge and dedicates herself to the destruction of the Hulot family, plotting their ruin with patient, silent malice. Cousin Bette is a gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, and a brilliant portrayal of the grasping, bourgeois society of 1840s Paris. The culmination of the Comedie humaine, Balzac's epic chronicle of his times, it is one of his greatest triumphs as a novelist.]]> Wed, 14 Sep 1977 21:47:48 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48071-the_wild_asss_skin.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48071-the_wild_asss_skin.html
The Wild Ass's Skin is Honoré de Balzac's 1831 novel that tells the story of a young man, Raphaël de Valentin, who discovers a piece of shagreen, in this case a rough untanned piece of a wild ass's skin, which has the magical property of granting wishes. However the fulfillment of the wisher's desire comes at a cost, after each wish the skin shrinks a little bit and consumes the physical energy of the wisher. "The Wild Ass's Skin" is at once both a work of incredible realism, in the descriptions of Parisian life and culture at the time, and also a work of supernatural fantasy, in the desires that are fulfilled by the wild ass's skin. Balzac uses this fantastical device masterfully to depict the complexity of the human nature in civilized society.]]> Wed, 14 Sep 1977 21:47:48 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/695935-the_lily_in_the_valley.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/695935-the_lily_in_the_valley.html
A new translation of one of Balzac’s finest novels, this tale of misguided passion centers on a young aristocrat who falls into a cloaked, coded entanglement with an older countess—a relationship that is upended when he becomes involved with a new lover.
A story of impossible and unsatisfied desire, Balzac’s The Lily in the Valley opens with a scene of desire unleashed. Félix de Vandenesse, the shy teenage scion of an aristocratic family, is at a ball, when his eyes are drawn to a beautiful woman in fashionable undress: before he knows what he is doing, he throws himself upon her, covering her bare back with kisses. In shock, she pushes him away. He leaves the party in shame.
The woman at the party is Henriette de Mortsauf, married to a much older count. Time passes, and Félix is reintroduced to her. Nothing is said of what transpired, though nothing is forgotten, and a courtship begins whose premise is that Félix will...]]> Sun, 08 Sep 2024 07:41:25 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48082-works_of_honore_de_balzac.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/48082-works_of_honore_de_balzac.html
Table of Contents List of Works by Genre and Title
List of Works in Alphabetical Order
Honore de Balzac Biography

La Com?die Humaine: Scenes From Private Life:
The Ball at Sceaux
The Purse
Madame Firmiani
A Second Home
Domestic Peace
Paz or The Imaginary Mistress
Study of a Woman
Another Study of Woman
La Grand Breteche (Sequel to "Another Study of Woman")
Albert Savarus
Letters of Two Brides
A Daughter of Eve
A Woman of Thirty
The Deserted Woman
La Grenadiere
The Message
Gobseck
The Marriage Contract
A Start in Life
Modeste Mignon
Beatrix
Honorine
Colonel Chabert
The Atheist's Mass
The Commission in Lunacy
Pierre Grassou

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Scenes From Provincial Life:
Ursule Mirouet or Ursula
Eugenie Grandet
The Celibates:
- Pierrette
- The Vicar of Tours
- The Two Brothers or A Bachelor's Establishment
Parisians in the Country:
- The Illustrious Gaudissart
- The Muse of the Department
The Jealousies of a Country Town
- An Old Maid
- The Collection of Antiquities
The Lily of the Valley
Lost Illusions (Les Illusions perdues)
*- The Two Poets
- A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
- Eve and David * Scenes From Parisian Life
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
- Esther Happy
- What Love Costs an Old Man
- The End of Evil Ways
- Vautrin's Last Avatar
A Prince of Bohemia
A Man of Business
Gaudissart II
Unconscious Comedians
The Thirteen
- Ferragus
- The Duchesse de Langeais
- The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Father Goriot
The Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau
The Firm of Nucingen
The Secrets of a Princess
Bureaucracy or The Government Clerks
Sarrasine
Facino Cane
Poor Relations
- Cousin Betty
- Cousin Pons
The Lesser Bourgeoisie or The Middle Classes Scenes From Political Life
An Historical Mystery or The Gondreville Mystery
An Episode Under the Terror
The Brotherhood of Consolation or The Seamy Side of History
- Madame de la Chanterie
- Initiated or The Initiate
Z. Marcas
The Deputy of Arcis or The Member for Arcis Scenes From Military Life
The Chouans
A Passion in the Desert Scenes From Country Life
The Country Doctor
The Village Rector or The Country Parson
Sons of the Soil or The Peasantry Philosophical Studies
The Magic Skin (La Peau de chagrin)
The Alkahest or The Quest of the Absolute
Christ in Flanders
Melmoth Reconciled
The Hidden Masterpiece
The Hated Son
Gambara
Massimilla Doni
Juana or The Maranas
Farewell
The Recruit or The Conscript
El Verdugo
A Drama on the Seashore or A Seaside Tragedy
The Red Inn
The Elixir of Life
Maitre Cornelius
Catherine De Medici
- The Calvinist Martyr
- The Ruggieri's Secret
- The Two Dreams
Louis Lambert
The Exiles
Seraphita Analytical Studies
The Physiology of Marriage Novels:
Adieu
Beatrix
The Country Doctor
Petty Troubles of Married Life
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan
Vendetta Short Stories:
At the Sign of the Cat & Racket
Domestic Peace
Droll Stories Volume 1
Droll Stories Volume 2
Droll Stories Volume 3
Folk-Tales of Napoleon, The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder
A Street of Paris and Its Inhabitant Plays:
Mercadet: A Comedy In Three Acts
Pamela Giraud: A Play In Five Acts
The Resources of Quinola
The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts
Vautrin: A Drama in Five Acts]]> Wed, 14 Sep 1977 21:47:48 +0300 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/636363-the_illustrious_gaudissart.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/636363-the_illustrious_gaudissart.html
Honoré de Balzac's short story ´The illustrious Gaudissaart´ reveals the arrogance and prejudice on both sides of the city-country divide.When a slick salesman from the big city visits the provincial town of Vouvray, he is confident that the locals will buy anything. But Gaudissart's apparent belief in the doctrine of Saint-Simonianism, which teaches that industrialisation will empty the countryside and create a Utopian society of workers, riles a local man named Vernier.He tricks him into selling items to his unstable neighbour Margaritis, who convinces the salesman to buy two non-existent wine barrels.This vindictive practical joke then escalates into legal action and a dramatic duel ensues. For more insights into life in 1830s Europe, try Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Ruth' and 'North and South'.-]]> Mon, 31 Jan 2022 09:25:10 +0200 https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/491364-history_of_the_thirteen_penguin_ed.html https://archive.bookfrom.net/honore-de-balzac/491364-history_of_the_thirteen_penguin_ed.html
Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that make up Balzac's History of the Thirteen are concerned in part with the activities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secret society in nineteenth-century France. While the deeds of 'The Thirteen' remain frequently in the background, however, the individual novels are concerned with exploring various forms of desire. A tragic love story, Ferragus depicts a marriage destroyed by suspicion, revelation and misunderstanding. The Duchess de Langeais explores the anguish that results when a society coquette tries to seduce a heroic ex-soldier, while The Girl with the Golden Eyes offers a frank consideration of desire and sexuality. Together, these works provide a firm and fascinating foundation for Balzac's many later portrayals of Parisian life in his great novel-cycle The Human Comedy.]]> Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:20:09 +0200