BRIEF LIVES: HONORE DE BALZAC

by David Carter

Honoré de Balzac worked as a publisher, printer and plagiarist before becoming the author of one of the greatest studies of human society, La Comédie humaine. This enormous, intricate, interlinked set of novels, portrayed an entire epoch of European history and continues to delight and fascinate modern readers. Its author – perpetually in debt, endlessly experimental, never finding enough hours in each day to write everything he needed to – led a life as rich and unpredictable as the characters in his fiction.

This new biography presents a compelling portrait of one of literature's great workaholics, of a writer driven by the impossible and overarching ambition of chronicling the whole of human nature.

Publication date: 01/09/2008