Honoré de Balzac

Balzac corresponded with Ewelina Hariska, a Polish noblewoman who was already married. Balzac married Ewelina in 1850 but died five months after the wedding.

He was buried at the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. Writer Victor Hugo served as pallbearer and eulogist at his funeral which was attended by "almost every writer in Paris”

He became the subject of a monumental statue by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, which stands near the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard Montparnasse and also featured in several of his smaller sculptures.

Balzac was born on 20th May 1799 to Bernard-François who struggled to achieve respectability and later became the Secretary to the King's Council and a Freemason, and Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier who hailed from a family of wealthy haberdashers in Paris.

Honoré, named after Saint Honoré of Amiens, was the second child born to the Balzacs. His elder brother was Louis-Daniel who survived only a month and his other siblings were Laure, Laurence and Henry-François.

At ten, he was sent to the Oratorio grammar school in Vendôme, where he studied for seven years. He found learning by rote difficult but was interested in reading books.

In1816 at Sorbonne, he studied under three famous professors. François Guizot, a later Prime Minister, taught Modern History, Abel-François Villemain taught French and classical literature, while Victor Cousin's encouraged his students to think independently.

Balzac’s father persuaded him to follow him into the law. For three years he was an apprentice in family-friend, Victor Passez’s office but turned down Passez’s offer to make him his successor in 1819.

His first literary venture was a libretto for a comic opera called Le Corsaire, based on Lord Byron's The Corsair. Realizing he would have trouble finding a composer, however, he turned to other pursuits.

In 1820, Balzac completed the five-act verse tragedy, Cromwell. It was reviewed by Andrieux, his sister’s tutor. On the manuscript, Andrieux wrote: "The author should do anything he likes, but not literature”.

He wrote short stories which were sold to publishers by Auguste Lepoitevin in 1821. In the next five years later, he wrote nine novels, all published under pseudonyms often in collaboration with other writers.

His 1822 novel, Vicaire des Ardennes caused an outrage and was banned for its depiction of nearly-incestuous relations of a married priest—attributed to a 'Horace de Saint-Aubin'.

In 1832, Balzac conceived his greatest work, ‘La Comédie humaine’ or The Human Comedy, a multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society, published in his lifetime under his own name.

Eugénie Grandet, his first best-selling 1833 novel was about a tale of a young lady who inherits her father's miserliness. It was critically acclaimed for its simple writing, but dynamic and complex individuals.