Balzac, Honoré de

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Balzac, Honoré de (1799–1850) French novelist. One of the greatest novelists of the 19th century, Balzac's first success was Les Chouans (1829). More than 90 novels and short stories followed during a lifetime of extraordinary creative effort. He organized these works into a grand fictional scheme, intended as a detailed, realistic study of the whole of contemporary French society, which he called La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy). Among his best-known novels are Eugénie Grandet (1833), Le Pére Goriot (1834–35), and La Cousine Bette (1846).

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