Bøker av Honore de Balzac

Philippe and Joseph Bridau are two extremely different brothers. The elder, Philippe, is a superficially heroic soldier and adored by their mother Agathe. He is nonetheless a bitter figure, secretly gambling away her savings after a brief but glorious career in Napoleon's army. His younger brother Joseph, meanwhile, is fundamentally virtuous - but their mother is blinded to his kindness by her disapproval of his life as an artist. Foolish and prejudiced, Agathe lives on unaware that she is being cynically manipulated by her own favourite child, but will she ever discover which of her sons is truly the black sheep of the family? A dazzling depiction of the power of money and the cruelty of life in nineteenth-century France, The Black Sheep compellingly explores is a compelling exploration of the nature of deceit.

Balzac is concerned with the choice between ruthless self-gratification and asceticism, dissipation and restraint, in a novel that is powerful in its symbolism and realistic depiction of decadence.

In 1842, eight years before his death, Balzac described Ursule Mirouet as the masterpiece of all the studies of human society that he had written; he regarded the book as 'a remarkable tour de force'.An essentially simple tale about the struggle and triumph of innocence reviled, Ursule Mirouet is characterized by that wealth of penetrating observation so readily associated with Balzac's work. The twin themes of redemption and rebirth are illuminated by a consistently passionate rejection of both philosophic and practical materialism in favour of love. In this case love is aided by supernatural intervention, which itself effectively illustrates Balzac's life-long fascination with the occult.

Physiology of Marriage in 3 volumes is a treatise by Honoré de Balzac, published under the title Physiology of Marriage or Meditations on eclectic philosophy, on marital happiness and unhappiness, published by a young bachelor. An essay, a meditation and a narrative at the same time, the text oscillates between the study of manners and the analytical treatise and it is part of a genre in developing, that of physiology. The text is divided into several "sections" or meditations. The first several meditations expose the state of marriage in France in the wealthy and idle upper classes, then propose a series of reforms to improve the marital status of women and thus prevent them from cheating on their husbands.

History of the Thirteen is a trilogy written by Honoré de Balzac: Ferragus is the first part, the second is La Duchesse de Langeais and the third is The Girl with the Golden Eyes. The story is set around the year 1820. Auguste de Maulincour, a young cavalry officer, walking in a Parisian district of ill repute, sees from afar a young married woman, Clemence, with whom he is secretly in love. In the days that follow his arrival to Paris, Auguste uncovers the secrets of powerful and mysterious people and escapes several assassination attempts.

The theme of celibacy was important to Balzac, who gave the name The Celibates to a sub-section of his famous La Comédie humaine. It consists of Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours and The Black Sheep (The Two Brothers). "Pierrette" tells the story of a sweet little orphan girl, Pierrette Lorrain. She gets adopted by her two older cousins, unmarried brother and sister shopkeepers, who become her guardian because they suspect that she has some inheritance coming. Cousins mistreat Pierrette, make her work as a servant and she becomes miserable. Only one who loves and cares for her is her childhood companion Brigaut. "The Vicar of Tours" is the tale of an old other-worldly, gentle, introspective vicar named Birotteau and his silent feud with his younger and ambition driven colleague, Troubert. Both of them are priests at Tours, having separate lodgings in the house of Sophie Gamard. When Birotteau leaves for several days, upon return he finds Troubert installed in his apartments, in full possession of his furniture and his library, whilst he himself has been moved into inferior rooms. Birotteau tries to regain his position, but their personal drama gets increasingly interwoven with the politics of their small city and becomes public. "The Black Sheep (The Two Brothers)" tells the story of the Bridau family, trying to regain their lost inheritance after a series of mishaps. Brothers Phillip and Joseph Bridau lose their father early. Philippe, who is the eldest and his mother''s favourite, becomes a soldier in Napoleon''s armies, and Joseph becomes an artist. After leaving army Philippe becomes a heavy drinker and gambler, while Joseph is a dedicated artist, and the more loyal son, but his mother does not understand his artistic vocation. They get into financial problems which lead to more troubles.

Eugénie Grandet is set in the town of Saumur. Eugénie''s father Felix is a former cooper who has become wealthy through both business ventures and inheritance. However, he is very stingy, and he lives with his family in a run-down old house which he is too miserly to repair. His banker des Grassins wants Eugénie to marry his son Adolphe, and his lawyer Cruchot wants Eugénie to marry his nephew President Cruchot des Bonfons, both parties eyeing the inheritance from Felix. The two families constantly visit the Grandets to get Felix''s favour, and Felix in turn plays them off against each other for his own advantage. On Eugénie''s birthday, in 1819, Felix''s nephew Charles Grandet arrives from Paris unexpectedly, after his father goes bankrupt. Charles is a spoiled and indolent young man who is having an affair with an older woman. Felix considers him to be a burden and plans to send him off overseas. However, Eugénie falls in love with Charles and stir things up.

The Lily of the Valley is a tale about love which parodies and depicts French society in the period of the Bourbon Restoration. It concerns the affection - emotionally vibrant but never consummated - between Félix de Vandenesse and Henriette de Mortsauf.

Venez découvrir le roman de Balzac grâce à une analyse littéraire de référence !Écrite par un spécialiste universitaire, cette fiche de lecture est recommandée par de nombreux enseignants. Cet ouvrage contient la biographie de l'écrivain, le résumé détaillé, le mouvement littéraire, le contexte de publication de l'¿uvre et l'analyse complète.Retrouvez tous nos titres au format PDF sur : www.fichedelecture.fr.

Beatrix: Translated By Katharine Prescott WormeleyThis book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature.In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards:1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, graphics, high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition - OCR) reproductions.2. Correction of imperfections: As the work was re-created from the scratch, therefore, it was vetted to rectify certain conventional norms with regard to typographical mistakes, hyphenations, punctuations, blurred images, missing content/pages, and/or other related subject matters, upon our consideration. Every attempt was made to rectify the imperfections related to omitted constructs in the original edition via other references. However, a few of such imperfections which could not be rectified due to intentional\unintentional omission of content in the original edition, were inherited and preserved from the original work to maintain the authenticity and construct, relevant to the work.We believe that this work holds historical, cultural and/or intellectual importance in the literary works community, therefore despite the oddities, we accounted the work for print as a part of our continuing effort towards preservation of literary work and our contribution towards the development of the society as a whole, driven by our beliefs. We are grateful to our readers for putting their faith in us and accepting our imperfections with regard to preservation of the historical content. HAPPY READING!

"This book was originally published as Splendeurs et misáeres des courtisanes, appearing in four parts from 1835-1847"--Title page verso.