Balzac Honoré de
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury (23 October 1845 - 28 January 1933), was an English writer and critic. Born in Southampton, he was educated at King's College School, London, and at Merton College, Oxford (B.A., 1868), and spent six years in Guernsey as senior classical master of Elizabeth College. From 1874 to 1876 he was headmaster of the Elgin Educational Institute. He began his literary career in 1875 as a critic for the Academy, and for ten years was actively engaged in journalism, becoming an important member of the staff of the Saturday Review. Some of the critical essays contributed to the literary journals were afterwards collected in his Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 (2 vols., 1890-1895), Essays on French Novelists (1891), Miscellaneous Essays (1892), Corrected Impressions (1895). In 1895 he became professor of rhetoric and English literature at the University of Edinburgh, a position he held until 1915. He retired to 1A Royal Crescent, Bath, Somerset and died there in 1933.[1] His first book, A Primer of French Literature (1880), and his Short History of French Literature (1882), were followed by a series of editions of French classics and of books and articles on the history of French literature, which made him the most prominent English authority on the subject. His studies in English literature were no less comprehensive, and included the valuable revision of Sir Walter Scott's edition of John Dryden's Works (Edinburgh, 18 vols., 1882-1893), Dryden (1881) in the "English Men of Letters" series, History of Elizabethan Literature (1887), History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1896), A Short History of English Literature (1898, 3rd ed. 1903), an edition of the Minor Caroline Poets of the Caroline Period (2 vols., 1905-1906), a collection of rare poems of great value, and editions of English classics. He coined the term "Janeite" for a fan of Jane Austen in his introduction to a 1894 edition of Pride and Prejudice. At the turn of the century, Saintsbury edited and introduced an English edition of Honoré de Balzac's novel series La Comédie humaine. He went on to edit the series of "Periods of European Literature," contributing the volumes on The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (1897), and The Earlier Renaissance (1901). He subsequently produced some of his most important works, A History of Criticism (3 vols., 1900-1904), with the companion volume Loci Critici, Passages Illustrative of Critical Theory and Practice (Boston, U.S.A., and London, 1903), and A History of English Prosody from the 12th Century to the Present Day (i., 1906; ii., 1908; iii., 1910); also The Later Nineteenth Century (1909). Although Saintsbury was best known as a scholar during his lifetime, he is perhaps best remembered today for his Notes on a Cellar-Book (1920), one of the great testimonials to drink and drinking in wine literature. When he was close to death, André Simon arranged a dinner in his honour. Although Saintsbury did not attend, this was the start of the Saintsbury Club, men of letters and members of the wine trade who continue to have dinners to this day.
Lost Illusions
- Author: Balzac Honoré de
- Genre: Electronic books
By this work of greater literary maturity Balzak created a new type of novel – a novel of disillusionment, of inevitable destruction of ideals, when faced with rough reality. In the “Lost Illusions” the author describes the destruction of bourgeois ideals under the influence of the capitalism. In the heart of the novel lies the theme of turning literature into article of trade, beginning with producing of paper up to the views, thoughts and feelings of authors. The narration is far from dry scientific nature, appearing a story of a career of the main character.
Colonel Chabert
- Author: Balzac Honoré de
- Genre: Classics
This book is a Carol Cosman's translation of Balzac's French 'Colonel Chabert' into the English. It is very felicitous translation that retains the style of the original French book.
It tells the story of a French military hero of the Napoleonic Wars, long thought to be dead, tries to recover his fortune and former wife through the help of a famous lawyer. He finds his wife remarried, and his pension gone. He employs a young, well-known lawyer to at least reclaim his pension. But first he has to convince the lawyer that he is the man that officially doesn’t exist…
The message is very amazing: having lost his ego through losing his “existence” in the society he acquires freedom…
Eugenie Grandet
- Author: Balzac Honoré de
- Genre: Historical
A “Human Comedy” of Honoré de Balzac, a French novelist and playwright, one of his earliest novels.
Eugenie Grandet was one of the most desirable fiancée of Saumur. Her father, a cooper in his past, became rich during the Revolution. The story is centred around the struggle between Eugenie and her father, which begun when she falls in love with her penniless cousin Charles. The madness about money makes him completely inhuman and cruel. Creating a human comedy Balzac posed a problem, new for the literature of that time. He aspired to portray, without pity but truthfully, the France of the 19th century, the real life of his contemporaries. In “Eugenie Grandet” he applies to the destructive power of money over people.
Balzac’s works are still popular among the wide readership, old and young, discovering in his novels the key to understanding of human soul.
Cousin Pons
- Author: Balzac Honoré de
- Genre: Fiction
Balzac’s Cousin Pons is one of his two books devoted to the subject of Poor Relations. An aged musician, a celebrity in his past, an honest and noble toiler, whiles the time away in obscurity and misery. All he has are his relatives, though contemptuously regarding his poverty, humiliating and deriding him in every way possible; and collection of antiques. Having learnt what treasure Pons possesses, they start a furious hunt for the inheritance. Honorable, seemingly, people are prepared for anything to get the riches of the dying lonely man. This novel displays spiritual impoverishment and limitation of the “respectable” bourgeois, which turn art values, unselfish pleasure for Pons, into a source of profit, object of vanity.
The Chouans
- Author: Balzac Honoré de
- Genre: History & Historical Fiction
The first book, published under the author;s own name in 1829, by Honoré de Balzac, a French novelist and playwright of the 19th century. It can be regarded as a peculiar prologue to his great epic “La Comédie Humaine”. The action takes place at the end of 1799, basing on one of the episodes of the struggle of royalist forces with Chouans. Balzac, creating a truthful picture of reality, reveals the causes of the rebellion with the help of accurate and clear characterization, cast light on the details of tactics, and imminence of the triumph.
Louis Lambert
- Author: Balzac Honoré de
- Genre: Classics
Louis Lambert is the main character of the book. Thanks to his amazing intellectual abilities he enters Collège de Vendôme. There he meets the narrator, a classmate named "the Poet", and soon two boys become friends. After graduating from the university Lambert lives in Paris for three years, and then he goes to his uncle’s house to Blois, where he meets a woman named Pauline de Villenoix and falls in love with her. But on the day before their wedding he suffers a mental breakdown. Considered to be "incurable" by doctors, Lambert is ordered into solitude and rest..
The Celibates
- Author: Balzac Honoré de
- Genre: Literary
When the time came to begin their education, disasters came, too. Jacques, left without means at the death of his father, was apprenticed by his relatives to a cabinet-maker, and fed by charity, as Pierrette was soon to be at Saint-Jacques. Until the little girl was taken with her grandparents to that asylum, she had known nothing but fond caresses and protection from every one. Accustomed to confide in so much love, the little darling missed in these rich relatives, so eagerly desired, the kindly looks and ways which all the world, even strangers and the conductors of the coaches, had bestowed upon her.
The Muse of the Department
- Author: Balzac Honoré de
- Genre: Literary
The comedié humaine.. Scenes from provincial life.
The Thirteen
- Author: Balzac Honoré de
- Genre: Literary
My emotion came from the sight of his face convulsed with madness, his haggard eyes, and also his words, broken by some violent inward emotion. I thought him mad. That is all that took place. Now, I should be less than a woman if I had not perceived that for over a year I have become, as they call it, the passion of Monsieur de Maulincour. He has never seen me except at a ball; and our intercourse has been most insignificant,--merely that which every one shares at a ball. Perhaps he wants to disunite us, so that he may find me at some future time alone and unprotected. There, see! already you are frowning! Oh, how cordially I hate society! We were so happy without him; why take any notice of him? Jules, I entreat you, forget all this! To-morrow we shall, no doubt, hear that Monsieur de Maulincour has gone mad."