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Honoré de Balzac biography at QuotationFun

A Short Biography of Honoré de Balzac

Author Name:

Honoré de Balzac

Born As:

Honoré de Balzac

Other Names:

Born:

20 May 1799

Died:

18 Aug 1850




author picture 
Realist novelist                          
Selected Works

Tragic verse:

Cromwell - 1819

Incomplete at time of death:
Le Corsaire - opera
Sténie
Falthurne
Corsino

Published pseudonymously:

As "Lord R'Hoone", in collaboration
L'Héritière de Birague - 1822
Jean-Louis - 1822
As "Horace de Saint-Aubin"
Clotilde de Lusignan - 1822
Le Centenaire - 1822
Le Vicaire des Ardennes - 1822
La Dernière Fée - 1823
Annette et le Criminal - Argon le Pirate - 1824
Wann-Chlore - 1826

Published anonymously:

Du Droit d'aînesse - 1824
Histoire impartiale des Jésuites - 1824
Code des gens honnêtes - 1826

Selected titles from La Comédie humaine:

Les Chouans - 1829
Sarrasine - 1830
La Peau de chagrin - 1830
Le Colonel Chabert - 1832
La Fille aux yeux d'or - 1833
Eugénie Grandet - 1833
Le Contrat de mariage - 1835
Le Père Goriot - 1835
Le Lys dans la vallée - 1835
Illusions perdues - I, 1837; II, 1839; III, 1843
La Cousine Bette - 1846
Le Cousin Pons - 1847
Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes - 1847

Plays:

L'École des ménages - 1839
Vautrin - 1839
Les Ressources de Quinola - 1842
Paméla Figaud - 1842
La Marâtre - 1848
Mercadet ou le faiseur - 1848
Tales
Contes drolatiques - 1832–37                          
Mother Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier
Father Bernard-François Balssa - five childen - Louis-Daniel had been born, but he lived for only a month. Honoré's sisters Laure and Laurence were born in 1800 and 1802, and his brother Henry-François in 1807.

In 1850, he married Ewelina Hańska, his longtime paramour. He died five months later.                          
                          
Immediately after his birth, Honoré was sent to a wet-nurse; the following year he was joined by his sister Laure and they spent four years away from home. Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's influential book Émile convinced many mothers of the time to nurse their own children, sending babies to wet-nurses was still common among the middle and upper classes. When the Balzac children returned home, they were kept at a frigid distance by their parents, which affected the author-to-be significantly. His 1835 novel Le Lys dans la Vallée features a cruel governess named Miss Caroline, modeled after his own caretaker.