Honoré de Balzac was a French writer whose literary works have been adapted into various forms of media, including films and television serials, such as Cousin Bette (1998) starring Jessica Lange, and Cousin Bette (1971) starring Margaret Tyzack and Helen Mirren.
Born on March 20, 1799, in Tours, France, Balzac was the son of Bernard Francois Balzac, a government regional administrator, and his wife, who was the daughter of his boss. The family relocated to Paris in 1815, where Balzac attended the Sorbonne, studied jurisprudence, and became a clerk for an attorney.
Despite his early efforts to publish his novels under a pseudonym and through his own publishing company, Balzac struggled financially and went into debt. His activity as a journalist, however, brought him recognition among intellectuals for his political and cultural reviews, which resonated with the mixed social expectations during the Restoration period.
The fall of the Bourbon monarchy in 1830 and the rise of the "bourgeois" monarchy created a new political backdrop for Balzac's literary works. He responded by creating the idea of a serialized, cross-genre web of stories and novels, linked together as a broad historic panorama of lives and events.
This ambitious project, known as "La Comedie humane" or "The Human Comedy," included approximately 100 stories, novels, and essays, some of which remained unfinished. Balzac's plans and plots evolved constantly, often changing to incorporate new ideas and gossip. His works reflected a mosaic of life in Paris and France from the 1820s to 1850.
"Les Chouans" (1829) served as a prologue to the Human Comedy, which began with "Scenes de la Vie Privee," six Scenes From a Private Life (1830-1832),and "La Peau de chagrin" (The Goat-skin 1831). Balzac wrote for 14 to 18 hours a day, often through the night, fueled by countless cups of coffee. He drew inspiration from the works of Walter Scott and William Shakespeare, as seen in his 1835 novel "Le pere Goriot" ("Father Goriot"),a "King Lear" type of story set in 1820s Paris.
Throughout his career, Balzac created over 2,000 characters and introduced many original plots. His most significant works include "Eugene Grande" (1833),a thousand-page saga; "Les Illusions Perdues" ("Lost Illusions"); "Le cousin Pons" (1847); and "La Cousine Bette" (1848). His novel "Eugenia Grande" was translated into Russian in 1844 by the young writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.
In the final year of his life, Balzac traveled to Poland to visit his pen-friend, Countess Evelina Hanska, a wealthy lady of the Polish nobility. They married in Berdichev, Russian Empire, in 1850, just three months before Balzac's death on August 18, 1850, in Paris. He was buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise.
