Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright, author of the vast, interlinked cycle of novels and stories he titled La Comédie humaine. Born in Tours in 1799, he was schooled at Vendôme and trained in law in Paris before turning to writing, first anonymously and then under his own name. Across roughly ninety works, including Le Père Goriot, Eugénie Grandet, and Illusions perdues, he built a panoramic portrait of post-Revolutionary French society, with recurring characters moving between books. He wrote at great speed under chronic debt. He married Ewelina Hańska in 1850 and died in Paris months later.