Pengarang: Honor de Balzac

Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on the condescending patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philandering Baron Hulot and …

‘This is as much a mystery as the Immaculate Conception, which of itself must make a doctor an unbeliever.’A stunning pair of short stories about faith and sacrificial love. Introducing Little Black …

Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and na ve, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman …

Monsieur Goriot is one of a disparate group of lodgers at Mademe Vauquer’s dingy Parisian boarding house. At first his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are mysteriously reduced he …

Eug ne wants to get on in the world. So he has come to Paris, where the streets teem with chancers, criminals and social climbers – and everyone is out for what they can get. When he finds a place to …

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 …

In a gloomy house in provincial Saumur lives the miser Grandet with his wife and daughter, Eug nie, whose lives are stifled and overshadowed by his obsession with gold. Guarding his piles of …

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 …

Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman …

Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is an ageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living a placid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with his …

Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that make up Balzac’s History of the Thirteen are concerned in part with the activities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secret society …

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 …

One of the greatest French novelists, Balzac was also an accomplished writer of shorter fiction. This volume includes twelve of his finest short stories – many of which feature characters from his …