Author of Audiobooks - Honoré de Balzac
Colonel Chabert - Honoré de Balzac
Colonel Chabert - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Historical Fiction
Colonel Chabert is a soldier, who goes missing during the Napoleonic wars, and then returns from the dead, most inconveniently for his wife, who has remarried and has gone up in the world. This novella by Balzac lays bare the venality of the French...
Gobseck - Honoré de Balzac
Gobseck - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Published 1800 -1900
Part of the La Comedie Humane and something of a sequence to Balzac's Father Goriot, the short book's title is the name of the pawn broker/money lender the father Goriot utilized to maintain his spoiled daughters in the luxury he had accustomed them...
The Red Inn - Honoré de Balzac
The Red Inn - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Action & Adventure Fiction / Single Author Collections
Staying at the red inn. Two army surgeons get caught up in a murder, intrigue and execution. - Summary by pmstrahm...
Lost Illusions: A Distinguished Provincial at Paris - Honoré de Balzac
Lost Illusions: A Distinguished Provincial at Paris - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Literary Fiction
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris (Un grand homme de province à Paris, 1839) is the second book in Balzac’s Lost Illusions trilogy, which is part of his sweeping set of novels collectively titled La Comédie Humaine. The story is set in...
The Vicar of Tours - Honoré de Balzac
The Vicar of Tours - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Undefined
Over twenty years before Anthony Trollope wrote The Warden, in which the gentle but unfortunate Rev. Septimus Harding becomes the prey of an investigative journalist, in 1831 Balzac published his Vicar of Tours. There too, a mild-mannered priest...
Modeste Mignon - Honoré de Balzac
Modeste Mignon - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: General Fiction / Romance
Modeste Mignon, a young provincial woman of romantic temperament, imagines herself to be in love with the famous Parisian poet Melchior de Canalis. However, he is not moved by her attentions. He invites his secretary Ernest de la Brière to "deal...
Father Goriot (version 2) - Honoré de Balzac
Father Goriot (version 2) - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Literary Fiction
Father Goriot (Le Père Goriot), published in 1835, is widely considered to be Balzac's finest and most popular novel. It is set in Paris in 1819, after Napoleon's defeat and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. France was undergoing massive...
Louis Lambert - Honoré de Balzac
Louis Lambert - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: General Fiction
Louis Lambert is an 1832 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Études philosophiques section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Set mostly in a school at Vendôme, it examines the life and...
The Girl with the Golden Eyes - Honoré de Balzac
The Girl with the Golden Eyes - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Romance / Published 1800 -1900
Listeners who like to plunge straight into a story would do well to skip the lengthy preamble. Here, Balzac the virtuoso satirist depicts the levels of Parisian society as a version of the Inferno of Dante - but perhaps keeps the reader waiting too...
Letters of Two Brides - Honoré de Balzac
Letters of Two Brides - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Epistolary Fiction
Letters of Two Brides is an epistolary novel. The two brides are Louise de Chaulieu (Madame Gaston) and Renée de Maucombe (Madame l'Estorade). The women became friends during their education at a convent and upon leaving began a life-long...
Cousin Betty - Honoré de Balzac
Cousin Betty - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Literary Fiction
Cousin Betty (La Cousine Bette), published in serial format in 1846, was one of the last and greatest of Balzac's works. It was part of his long novel collection titled La Comédie Humaine. Set in mid-19th-century France, it tells the story of a...
Love in a Mask, or Imprudence and Happiness - Honoré de Balzac
Love in a Mask, or Imprudence and Happiness - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Published 1900 onward
Love in a Mask, or Imprudence and Happiness, is an entertaining short novel by Honoré de Balzac, unpublished in his lifetime. Beginning with a flirtatious conversation at a masked ball, Balzac introduces his two main characters, a beautiful wealthy...
The Firm of Nucingen - Honoré de Balzac
The Firm of Nucingen - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: General Fiction
Part of the Comedie Humane and a "supplementary" tale to go with Father Goriot and Gobseck. Nucingen is the married family name of one of Father Goriot's daughters. "James Waring" is a pseudonym of Ellen Marriage (Balzac was considered sometimes too...
Lost Illusions: Two Poets - Honoré de Balzac
Lost Illusions: Two Poets - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Literary Fiction
Two Poets (1837) is the first book in Balzac’s Lost Illusions trilogy, which is part of his sweeping set of novels collectively titled La Comédie Humaine. The story is set in post-Napoleonic France, when the new bourgeoisie was jostling for position...
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life - Honoré de Balzac
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Literary Fiction / Published 1800 -1900
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life is one of the last great works completed by Balzac for his huge novel series entitled The Human Comedy. Sections of this book, in various groupings and with various titles, were published between 1838 and 1847. It...
Farewell - Honoré de Balzac
Farewell - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: War & Military Fiction / Published 1800 -1900
In his startling and tragic novella Farewell (‘Adieu’), Balzac adds to the 19th century’s literature of the hysterical woman: sequestered, confined in her madness; mute, or eerily chanting in her moated grange. The first Mrs Rochester lurks in the...
Catherine De' Medici - Honoré de Balzac
Catherine De' Medici - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Historical Fiction / Early Modern
The Philosophical Studies from The Human Comedy (La Comedie Humaine) are a series of works that are intended as a reflection on history in part through the use of fiction. 'Catherine de Medici' is one such 'study', and features, alongside detailed...
The Magic Skin - Honoré de Balzac
The Magic Skin - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Literary Fiction
Something along the lines of Dorian Gray as part of the Comedies Humane Philosophique, this is Balzac's first successful novel. He even wrote "criticisms" of the writing himself in promotion of the book, in addition to hyping the work before it even...
Another Study of Woman - Honoré de Balzac
Another Study of Woman - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Literary Fiction
A series of tales -- told by men, of course -- about women. Though the book first appeared in 1842, Balzac later added to it as an addenfum a tale of 1831, La Grande Bretèche. That will be read later, keeping it separate to mirror the form of the...
La Grande Bretèche - Honoré de Balzac
La Grande Bretèche - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Literary Fiction
La Grande Bretèche is an addendum to Balzac's Another Study of Woman, and is the final of a set of stories told around a dinner table. This one, given to the guests at about two in the morning, is tale of marital infidelity and revenge,and perhaps...
Cousin Pons - Honoré de Balzac
Cousin Pons - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Literary Fiction
Cousin Pons is one of the final works in Balzac's long novel series titled The Human Comedy. It was published in 1847, along with Cousin Betty, as one of a complementary pair of novels, collectively titled Poor Relations. While Cousin Betty tells...
Eugénie Grandet - Honoré de Balzac
Eugénie Grandet - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Literary Fiction
Eugénie Grandet, first published in 1833, is one of Honoré de Balzac's finest novels, and one of the first works in what would become his large novel series titled La Comédie Humaine. Set in a provincial town in post-Revolutionary France, the story...
Lost Illusions: Ève and David - Honoré de Balzac
Lost Illusions: Ève and David - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Literary Fiction / Published 1800 -1900
Ève and David (1843) is the final book in Balzac’s Lost Illusions trilogy, which is part of his sweeping set of novels collectively titled La Comédie Humaine. The story is set in post-Napoleonic France. In the first volume of the trilogy (Two Poets,...
Sarrasine - Honoré de Balzac
Sarrasine - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Romance
Published by Honoré de Balzac in the tempestuous year of 1830, the tale follows the undulating pathways of Sarrasine the sculptor’s shocking journey to his coming of age. As one of the “fathers of realism” Balzac painted with his words a vivid...
Father Goriot - Honoré de Balzac
Father Goriot - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Historical Fiction / Literary Fiction
One of Balzac's most popular works, set around 1815 during the re-ascendancy of the Bourbon kings following the defeat of Napoleon. Said to have been an inspiration to Charles Dickens and Henry James as well as others, the novel seeks to portray the...
The Chouans - Honoré de Balzac
The Chouans - Honoré de Balzac
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
- Genre: Action & Adventure Fiction
Les Chouans is one of the novels in Balzac's series La Comedie Humaine. Its ostensible focus is a historical military conflict, but it also follows the love affair between an aristocratic beauty with one of the rebels....