Book Description
You will never have a safer and more sincere friend than your mother, or better servants than those who have been so long attached to her person, without whose services you might perhaps not even exist to-day. The Guises want both your life and your throne, be sure of that. If they could sew me into a sack and fling me into the river," she said, pointing to the Seine, "it would be done to-night.Download Description
You will never have a safer and more sincere friend than your mother, or better servants than those who have been so long attached to her person, without whose services you might perhaps not even exist to-day. The Guises want both your life and your throne, be sure of that. If they could sew me into a sack and fling me into the river," she said, pointing to the Seine, "it would be done to-night. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Drama Galore!
Balzac guided European fiction away from the overriding influence of Walter Scott and the Gothic school, by showing that modern life could be recounted as vividly as Scott recounted his historical tales, and that mystery and intrigue did not need ghosts and crumbling castles for props. Maupassant, Flaubert and Zola were writers of the next generation who were directly influenced by him, and Marcel Proust (that other weaver of a great tapestry) acknowledged his influence.

He is worth reading for pleasure as well as for his influence on European literature.
... Read more

Book Description
'Who is going to marry Eugenie Grandet?'This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugenie Grandet (1833), one of the the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's Comedie humaine. The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugenie's cousin Charles, recently orphaned and penniless.Eugenie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, brings her into direct conflict with her father, whose cunning and financial success are matched against her determination to rebel.Eugenie's moving story is set against the backdrop of provincial oppression,the vicissitudes of the wine trade, and the workings of the financial system in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It is both a poignant portrayal of private life and a vigorous fictional document of its age. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good as gold
Monsieur Grandet, the father of the titular heroine of Balzac's short novel "Eugenie Grandet," is not just a miser; he is a caricature of a miser, a modern Midas whose first love is gold, as ornately drawn as Dickens's Scrooge, but somehow more believable.He is an elderly vintner living with his wife and daughter Eugenie, his only child, in a provincial French town called Saumur, and even they don't know exactly how much money he has.He is so stingy he has let his house fall into decrepitude and doles out basic necessities like sugar, candles, and firewood as though there were a shortage.He is so sinfully avaricious that even on his deathbed he can only lust for the priest's silver crucifix.He is devious, too--he has a disarmingly strange business manner in which he feigns stammering and deafness to derail his opponent's train of thought.He is, in short, one of the best characters a reader could hope for.

Given the power of Grandet's presence and the extremity of his greed, a reader might expect him to be due for a fall, but Balzac is more interested in demonstrating how Eugenie becomes a noble woman despite, or perhaps because of, her parental influence.The story concerns the fortune of her spoiled but innocent cousin Charles, the son of Grandet's younger brother in Paris, and how she deals with his change in personality after he goes abroad to seek employment after his father's debt-induced suicide and returns having engaged in the cruel enterprise of slave trading.(I was reminded of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, who is hardened by the competitiveness of world commerce into rationalizing his immoral business pursuits.)He forsakes his love for Eugenie by arranging a marriage of convenience to another girl to increase his social status, revealing himself to be as cold and calculating as his uncle, but Eugenie triumphs in the end through her magnanimity.

This is the third Balzac novel I've read, and the third I'd label a masterpiece.Here we have a fascinating study of the interplay between four very strong characters--Old Grandet, his sheltered and naive but soon-to-be-wise daughter, his libertine nephew, and his trusted female servant Nanon, who appears to have the most goodness and common sense of anybody in the story--woven into an elegant tale that has the simplicity and moral lucidity of a fable with the substance of a Shakespearean drama, the work of a playwright at heart who prefers to write in prose.Whether or not it was his intention, Balzac convinces us, with delicious satire instead of tedious didacticism, that there are lessons to be learned from the examples set by flawed as well as virtuous people.

... Read more

Book Description
Volume 1 of 2. This Book Contains A Memoir By His Sister Madame De Surville. Other volumes in this set are ISBN(s): 1419180118. ... Read more

Book Description
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)

Many people (among them Henry James) have considered Balzac to be the greatest of all novelists. Eugenie Grandet, his spare, classical story of a girl whose life is blighted by her father's hysterical greed, goes a long way to justifying that opinion. One of the most magnificent of his tales of early nineteenth-century French provincial life, this novel is the work of a writer on whom nothing was lost, and who represents most fully the ability of the human animal to understand and illuminate its own condition.

Translated By Ellen Marriage With An Introduction By Fredric R. Jameson

Fredric R. Jameson is William A. Lane, Jr. Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University in North Carolina. His publications include Sartre: The Origins of a Style, Signatures of the Visible, and Post-modernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, with Aesthetics of the Geopolitical forthcoming. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

A particularly fertile Balzac...
This book rates five stars, but it is a different five stars than, for instance, Lolita deserves. Balzac was a literary genius, and this abbreviated work demonstrates his supernal talents...not only is the prose beautiful, but he manages to take a stock situation and mine some novel insights out of it.

However, this book is not ground-breaking, life-changing, etc. It's a pawn in the literary chessboard, worthy of the reader's time, but nothing truly profound or of great importance...and easily sacrificed in favor of more important pieces.

That caveat out of the way, I recommend the book for its beauty, brevity, levity, and edifying content.

Great Novel...
Don't want to repeat others, but this novel is very easy to read and while you are doing it you feel youare a part of that household, almost feeling the mood of all present characters.
Highly recommend this book...

contents are good but the printing condition is not good
it was an intresting story...it leaves something to think about life. Mr. Grandet-the vingrower& cooper/ Eugenie's father- is more impressive than Eugenie in this book. i would recommand this book for the people who don't read it yet. but this book's printing condition is bad...it looks like just copied by scanner and printed by text version black & white by printing device.

A Touching and Personal Novel
The tragedy of Eugenie Grandet is one that never fails to move me, no matter how many times I read it.This is one of those perfect novels about "small" people.Some may find it slow going relative to more contemporary novels, but the scenes are beautifully set, the characters well drawn, and the experience enveloping.Compared to many of its contemporaries, this novel is a study in narrative economy.Other reviews explain the plot, so I won't bother.

This is also an ideal book if one wishes to introduce a young person (especially a girl) to the classics.Any child who is comfortable reading the Harry Potter or Wizard of Oz books should have no trouble with this, except for some archaic vocabulary.All the romance in the novel is either courtly or mercenary, but certainly never inappropriate or too complicated for a young person; neither does it have the high melodrama of, say, Tess of the D'Ubervilles.

This is not to say that the book is too facile for an adult.Rather, it is so well written and constructed it will appeal to nearly everyone.

For Love of Gold: The Burden of the Miser, Scathingly Told
Marcel Proust famously said of Balzac: "He hides nothing; he says everything."A more fitting quote has never been attributed to this visionary of the mid-19th century, this paragon and paradox, who at the age of thirty declared that he would devote his life to a chronicle of his contemporary era, classifying the social strata of France through narrative.Balzac went on to write more than ninety novels of his self-styled 'Human Comedy', the deliberate rival and successor to Dante's vast metaphorical triumph, a handful of which are rightly considered to be among the utmost achievement of classical literature.Balzac's ego was as vast as his ambition and his talent, and he considered 'pretended portrayal' - shallow platitudes to disguise interior deficiencies - as vain and unworthy. In his art Balzac sought to consolidate and epitomize whatever themes he worked on at the time, drawing inspiration from his own experiences and multifold resources...if Henry James is correct in his claim that Balzac's great glory stemmed from the fact that he pretended ~hardest~, through the combination of overwork and intuition, then his unique status is assured on that effort alone: but we have his works to draw on, all ninety-three of them, to reassure that Balzac's spirit and intent were pure: in other words, the art of complete representation.Few can match the French genius in this regard.

Each of Balzac's novels tackle a different theme of the human condition, and in *Eugenie Grandet*, written in 1833, the subject of avarice is contemplated, and devastatingly revealed, through the author's usual concoction of dry wit, scathing portrayal, minutiae-obsession and omniscient understanding: Balzac's perspective is that of the all-seeing, all-knowing Godhead third eye, simultaneously deconstructing and putting into perspective the actions and consequences of the miser, in all his sordid, gold-grasping compulsion.It's difficult to second-guess or place doubt upon the fiery condemnations explicit in this text: just brace yourself for the ride, and expect the grunts of agreement, the surprised whistles and the startled outbursts of laughter that inevitable result from a tour through this man's prodigious mind.Entering Balzac is to confront oneself with genius, to learn and be humbled...and be entertained, lest I forget, in ways rarely qualified by his contemporaries.It is this humorous quality, implicit in his contemplation of human nature, that endear Balzac so close to my heart; even when you know events are going to turn badly, as they so often do, the rare psychological and sociological insight of the author, so keen, pessimistic yet never despairing, buoy one across the tides of tragedy.

I loathe to speak too much of the interior text of any Balzac novel, which in turn always somewhat hinders my attempt at review, for it is my belief that the shape and scope of each particular episode of The Human Comedy should be discovered by the diligent reader with as little knowledge about the text as possible, therein to reduce spoiling the impact of the narrative; a foolish desire, I know: and a standard overview of the surface is necessary.Thus: *Eugenie Grandet* tells the tale of the quintessential miser, Monsieur Grandet, a man who, as another reviewer accurately depicted, is a caricature of money-grubbers everywhere - but what a caricature! One cannot help feel as much amused as disgusted by Grandet's penny-pinching and wily business shenanigans, which include the affectation of a stammer to throw off opponents, shady negotiations to curtail any forced obligations, and casual back-stabbing of his compatriots when there is coin to be made; the portrait is made complete with massive amounts of gloating and caressing of his gold behind closed doors.Grandet lives to make money, and to have as little of it leave his possession as possible, thus reducing his immediate family to a state of penury entailing shaved lumps of sugar, a ban on fires for most of the year, an utter lack of decorative excess and a strict rationing of bread and water as the main constituent - jam being an outrageous luxury! Madame Grandet and her daughter, Eugenie, suffer like saints in this condition, ignorant of any other sort of lifestyle, at least until cousin Charles Grandet of Paris appears at the door one day, a dandy whose finery and extravagance shocks the elder Grandet and bewitches the deprived Eugenie.From here I will reveal no more, except to say that Grandet's miserly affliction condemns his offspring, even from beyond the grave; avarice becomes a hereditary endowment, unconsciously applied, though the daughter - shy and virginal - continually exerts her generous nature despite the installed programming, giving a faint ray of charitable bliss to the grim consequence of the denouement.

In all of his novels, Balzac peppers the narrative with observational asides and digressions, enhancing the story with the reflections of earned experience:

"The beginning of love and the beginning of life have a pleasing likeness to one another.Is it not everyone's concern to lull a child with soothing songs and kind looks, to tell him stories of wonders that paint the future with gold for him?Are not hope's dazzling wings always spread for his delight? Does he not shed tears of joy as well as grief, and grow impatient about nothing, about the stones with which he tries to build an unsteady palace, about the flowers forgotten as soon as picked? Is he not eager to grasp time and put it behind him, to get on with his business of life? Love is the soul's second metamorphosis." (pgs 168-169)

It is these moments of internalized perception, brought forth from quill to parchment, that bring the events surrounding into perspective; that make Balzac an author to be poured over, analyzed with delight, to be read again and again.*Eugenie Grandet* deserves its place next to *Lost Illusions*, *The Black Sheep*, *Pere Goirot* and *Cousin Bette* at the forefront of The Human Comedy, and literature in general.

Highly Recommended. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Should be one of the most famous
A Murky Business is wonderful. The acute eye and superb writing of Balzac are put in service of a political mystery novel. Napoleon is trying to conquer Europe, and Fouche, his police chief (a fascinating historical character) is covering his back, doing all the dirty work. For Napoleon has powerful enemies who are conspiring to depose him. Malin is one of the conspirators, a man who buys a big house called Gondreville, in rural Champagne. Michú, his servant, helps her beautiful and rich neighbor, Lorence de Cynq-Cygne (one of Balzac's strongest and smartest female characters) to get their cousins secretly into France. These guys, called Simeuse, are conspirators exiled by Napoleon. Fouche gets to know the Simeuses are back in France, and starts the search for them, kidnapping Malin. What follows I won't spoil, but it is a great novel with a very dark tone. There are spies, traitors, revenge and passion. I am amazed that this novel is not much more famous, since it is magnificent entertainment and excellent literature.

Worhty of the praise of Machiavelli himself.
Conspiracy theorists rejoice.Balzac weaves such a complex web, that a highlighter should be sold with the book.As Napoleon decides the fate of Europe, others are secretely deciding the fate of France.From the streetsof Paris, just beneath the Emperors nose, to the provincial farmers ofChampaign; machinations with a flair not seen since the Borgias lead thereader along this rollercoaster. ... Read more

Book Description
Originally published in the early 1920's as part of a series, The Works of Honoré De Balzac is a superb collection, which includes: . A Daughter of Eve . The Unconscious Mummers . A Prince of Bohemia . A Man of Business . Gaudissart II . The Firm of Nucingen.Each novella, expertly prefaced by George Saintsbury, displays Balzac's genius for short imaginative prose. Journalist and writer HONORÉ DE BALZAC (1799-1850) is considered one of the masters of realism in Western literature. A prodigious creator of novels and short stories, Balzac's literary masterpieces include Le Pére Goriot, Les Illusions Perdues, Les Paysans, La Femme de Trente Ans, and Eugénie Grandet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Works of Honore De Balzac
It was French translation which wasn't abvious when I've purchased it. This is a great book, I know this author and this book very well and I bought it for my son. I sent it back to France to seller and so far don't have a word from them about my refund and reinbursement of my sending expences. Unfortunatelly, this experience isn't good becouse of tanslation. ... Read more

Book Description
Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of high rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.Download Description
Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of high rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Life in 19th century bourgeois France
Balzac guided European fiction away from the overriding influence of Walter Scott and the Gothic school, by showing that modern life could be recounted as vividly as Scott recounted his historical tales, and that mystery and intrigue did not need ghosts and crumbling castles for props. Maupassant, Flaubert and Zola were writers of the next generation who were directly influenced by him, and Marcel Proust (that other weaver of a great tapestry) acknowledged his influence.

He is worth reading for pleasure as well as for his influence on European literature.

Humanism and frivolity?
Balzac spent 16 years to write this book -trought 1828 to 1844 and it's divided in 6 parts. The first 3 goes to the middle of the tale and the narrative is deep and focused on the france social life trought the beginning of the XIX century.

Balzac shows in those firsts chapters a lot of questions about society and moralism, showing a good view trought humanism and the cruel place of a woman on society at that time. Altought the reader get inside trought the life of Julie, her bad marriage and her deisires for love, the narrator is always telling us the problems surrounding the emancipation of a woman. "The purity of a woman is not compatible with society's obligations and freedom. To emancipate women means corrupt them". It sounds like Balzac agree with the terms of society.

In the last 3 chapters the narrative get more dinamic and more superficial. Like a "blue library" tale. Those romantic -like a sugar cam- tale. So Balzac broke the rhithm of narrative. It really appears like a mistake. Another mistakes are the change of narrator focus - from 3th to 1th- on the 4th chapter, and the last mistake is some problems with time rhithm: in one page the history is on 1920, for example, and 20 or 30 pages after, passed 4 years on the narrative it starts like "it was summer 1921"...

Would Balzac made those mistakes? Or would it be on purpose? The author made a lot of questions trought society's frivolity and humanism. Those mistakes wouldn't be a way of showing critizing over morality trought society? These are some question that I have in mind... Would be Balzac superficial, ignoring those mistakes? Or would it be an ironic and slight way of showing his questions trought society? ... Read more

Book Description
"Balzac [was] the master unequalled in the art of painting humanity as it exists in modern society," wrote George Sand. "He searched and dared everything."

Written between 1837 and 1843, Lost Illusions reveals, perhaps better than any other of Balzac's ninety-two novels, the nature and scope of his genius. The story of Lucien Chardon, a young poet from Angoulême who tries desperately to make a name for himself in Paris, is a brilliantly realistic and boldly satirical portrait of provincial manners and aristocratic life. Handsome and ambitious but naïve, Lucien is patronized by the beau monde as represented by Madame de Bargeton and her cousin, the formidable Marquise d'Espard, only to be duped by them. Denied the social rank he thought would be his, Lucien discards his poetic aspirations and turns to hack journalism; his descent into Parisian low life ultimately leads to his own death.

"Balzac was both a greedy child and an indefatigable observer of a greedy age, at once a fantastic and a genius, yet possessing a simple core of common sense," noted V. S. Pritchett, one of his several biographers. Another, André Maurois, concluded: "Balzac was by turns a saint, a criminal, an honest judge, a corrupt judge, a minister, a fob, a harlot, a duchess, and always a genius."

This Modern Library edition presents the translation by Kathleen Raine. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Exceptional and elaborate; delicious and intricate novel
Lost Illusions by Balzac is one of the most famous novels out of the ninety two he wrote in his lifetime and maybe also among a million his admirers have written in 175 years since his first novel was published.

Balzac choses Lucien as a romantic, good-looking dreamy poet. We are first thrust into his provincial life, with details about his ordinary life and extraordinary ambitions that he has no means of realizing. Except patronage by an older woman! She leads him to Paris, only to abandon him to fight his way into the high society. How Lucien rises and falls in the glamorous, amorous, corrupt and vicious life as a journalist in Paris is picturized through a narrative that is bathed in realism, and yet proceeds through both suspense and wit, in the spirit of the pace at which Balzac could conjure up such novels.

In the provinces, Lucien has a friend, David, who likewise is somewhat lacking in social and economic acumen, and is a hard working inventor. David own father ruins him by extracting an unreasonable price for the printing press that he leaves or sells to his own son. Crafty competitors take advantage of David's credulous character. David enduresboth provincial small mindedness and economic setbacks suffered to keep Lucien afloat. Balzac displays his knowledge of these disparate characters with remarkable attention to detail. He weaves an undercurrent, of what could have passes as a dissertation, on the art and science of paper making.

Balzac creates in his one book, a saga that unravels friendship, love, jealousy, lust, ambition, vanity, greed and absurdity that lurk in our beings and in our relationships. By using two main pillars, Lucien and David, Balzac erects a bridge into the two worlds of poetry and science. He shuns hint of any romance of either worlds, and shows how much character, how many hardships and set-backs, how much devotion and laborare required for a man to become a known poet or a scientist.

I am quoting an example from this translation (carried out by Katharine Prescott Wormeley):

"No one can be a great man cheaply," said d'Arthez in his gentle voice. "Genius waters her work with tears.Talent is a moral being which, like all other beings, is subject to the maladies of childhood. Society rejects undeveloped talent just as nature removes her feeble or deformed creations. Whoever wishes to rise above his fellows must be prepared to struggle, and not recoil at difficulty. A great writer is a martyr who does not die - that's the whole of it!"

Besides the two pillars, the book has an interesting array of characters. Actresses, society women, editors and publishers, lawyers, struggling writers, dandies - all appear with their human failings and foibles as part of a drama that unfolds with an enrapturing narrative. Be it history, economics, alchemy, or psychology, or any topic under the sun, Balzac ushers in his great knowledge, suspending and supporting the story with able and apt pointers, tresses and metaphors.

Balzac's Lost Illusions is undoubtedly a classic everyone can enjoy and must read at some point in their lives. Highly recommended.

A "Regular People" Review
I read this book during my latest visit to my favorite middle east country.I must admit that I didn't enjoy this book as much as others.I felt like it was slow to come around and I thought there was too much detail on (seemingly) unimportant things at times.I'm just a regular person, so that said if you are an accomplished reader you may love this, for neophytes such as myself, other titles are more likely to be properly enjoyed (see my reviews)...and keep me updated!

Swimming among sharks
This is one of the best novels by Balzac, which is to say much, since he is still one of the best writers that have ever lived. Here, as in the rest of his work, the reader can appreciate Balzac's knowledge of worldly life, and especially the world of business, so alien to other writers. In this book he elaborates on the printing business as well as on journalism -vastly so-, back when it first began as a mercantilist activity. He contraststhe small life and intrigues of the province with the -no less petty but more gandiose- life and intrigues of the big city, Paris, and in particular of the faubourg Saint-Germain, the paradise of the Parisian jet-set.

David Sechard is a young man who inherits, at great cost, his cold and greedy father's printing business. Lucien Chardon (later "de Rubempre", after taking his impoversihed mother's more aristocratic last name) is his best friend. Both of them share a love for poetry, but it is Lucien who comes to shine as the young genius of province, the promise for whom it is worth it to sacrifice it all. Lucien gets the love of one Louise de Bargeton, the "queen of Angouleme", the most cultivated and refined woman in town. Louise promises to take Lucien to Paris, introduce him into the great society, and make him triumph as a poet. His family gives him all they can to get him started, and off he goes to Paris. But he happens to be arrogant, proud, and insecure, and soon he suffers the despise and insolence of aristocrats and other rich people. After what he believes to be an offense from Louise, he rejects her, earning her eternal hatred.

In the meantime, Lucien has been spending time with two very different circles of friends. The first is composed of a group of young intellectuals, hardworking guys sacrificing money and fun for the sake of science, art, and knowledge. They are there for him in times of need, and encourage him to keep up with his writing. The second group is a bunch of journalists, easy going but corrupt people who convince him to achieve quick fame and money. Lucien gets more and more trapped by this seemingly easy life, and after he conquers the love of the prettiest actress in Paris, his fate is decided. He achieves fame and fortune overnight, and so he jumps completely into the world of parties, frivolity and silly competition for status. At this point in the novel, Balzac introduces us to the sordid, decadent, and disgusting world of journalism understood as an unmerciful network of extortion and constant blackmailing. Lucien slides down that road, getting recognition and fame, oblivious to the growing net of envy that closes in around him every day.

What follows is the sad story of an unlikable character. Lucien has very little redeeming qualities about him, as opposed to some of his early friends, his young lover and his family. He is blind as blind can be, since his extreme selfishness builds a cloud in which he lives. He cares for nobody, except perhaps for the little Coralie, and he goes on leaving too many wounded bodies by the side of the road. Nevertheless, this character is the vehicle that allows Balzac to show us the real world out there. This writer never ever gives up to the temptation of sweetening things for the reader, he's brave and persists on his plan. Balzac is never a moralizing preacher, he is just a skillful painter of life as it is.

Here, as in the rest of his work, you will find characters who also appear in other novels, an ingenious device intended to give us a feeling of reality. This book is never boring and builds up tension rapidly, even for its length. It is an encompassing ride through all the fancies of youth gone wrong, as well as an unrelenting depiction of all the falseness and emptiness of high society. Much recommended.

Balzac at his best
I love Balzac.At his best he soars above the rest of French literature and here he is definitely at his finest. Easy to see why Proust thought him the best, at his best. Vautrin/Collyn is at his most sinister and attractive.If you haven't read Balzac before, this is the best to start with.

a true master of realism!!
Balzac's wit and and talent is simply unsurpassable!!
As Lucien is manipulated by the rich aristocrats to the point of self distraction in order to pursue his talents in poetry, we learn the price of fame and status and condemn the aristocratic society where can be a fine line between pleasure and pain. Balzac's theme-like mythology- on the confilcs of high and low society is never aging.. ... Read more

Product Description
At the dawn of an October day in 1827 a young fellow about sixteen years of age, whose clothing proclaimed what modern phraseology so insolently calls a proletary, was standing in a small square of Lower Provins. ... Read more

Book Description
Balzac's literary output began with chronicles and sketches on widely varied social and artistic topics. The journals to which he contributed were increasingly looking for short fiction, which Balzac was able to provide. A collection Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes from Private Life) came out in 1829, and was well received: these were tales told with a journalistic eye which looked into the fabric of modern life and did not shun social and political realities. Balzac had found a distinctive voice. ... Read more

Product Description
"Les Cahiers Balzacien '', no. 8. Five illustrations and two portraits. Limited edition of 599 copies. ... Read more