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Balzac is one of France's greatest storytellers and this particular thriller is one of his most spine-tingling ones. The Chouans were a counter-revolutionary movement during the French Revolution that occurred in the region between Brittany and Nantes and Balzac places his story in this accurate historic contest. The book is fast-paced and an extraordinary read and highly memorable. (Michael Finocchiaro)About the author: Honoré de Balzac born Honoré Balzac; (20 May 1799 - 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers. James called him "really the father of us all."An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office, but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie Humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly owing to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska (née Contessa Rzewuska), a Polish aristocrat and his longtime love. He died in Paris six months later. (wikipedia.org)

Séraphîta is a French novel by Honoré de Balzac with themes of androgyny. It was published in the Revue de Paris in 1834. In contrast with the realism of most of the author's best known works, the story delves into the fantastic and the supernatural to illustrate philosophical themes.In a castle in Norway near the fjord Stromfjord, Séraphitüs, a strange and melancholic being, conceals a terrible secret. Séraphitüs loves Minna, and she returns this love, believing Séraphitüs to be a man. But Séraphitüs is also loved by Wilfrid, who considers Séraphitüs to be a woman (Séraphîta).In reality, Séraphitüs-Séraphîta is a perfect androgyne, born to parents who by the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg have transcended their humanity, and Séraphitüs-Séraphîta is the perfect example of humanity.Ruggero Leoncavallo wrote a symphonic poem based on the story.An early drawing of Paul Gauguin's ceramic sculpture Oviri bears the inscription Et le monstre, entréignant sa créature, féconde de sa semence des flancs généreux pour engendrer Séraphitus-Séraphita ("And the monster, embracing its creation, filled her generous womb with seed and fathered Séraphitus-Séraphita"), referring to the novel.From 2010 to 2014 Ouriel Zohar staged Seraphita, his adaptation of the novel starring Barbara Heman at the Théâtre de l'Île Saint-Louis in Paris, and then in several countries around the world. (wikipedia.org)About the author: Honoré de Balzac born Honoré Balzac; (20 May 1799 - 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers. James called him "really the father of us all."An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office, but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie Humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly owing to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska (née Contessa Rzewuska), a Polish aristocrat and his longtime love. He died in Paris six months later. (wikipedia.org)

Honoré de Balzac born Honoré Balzac; (20 May 1799 - 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers. James called him "really the father of us all."An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office, but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie Humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly owing to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska (née Contessa Rzewuska), a Polish aristocrat and his longtime love. He died in Paris six months later. (wikipedia.org)

In a practical sense, Ursule Mirouët is a novel about family inheritance, money, and property. From an emotional standpoint, it is about the evil wrought by greed and envy, and about the steadfastness of innocence, friendship, and love. But Balzac also indulges in his fascination with hypnotism and mesmerism, and a pivotal plot point revolves around spiritual "ghostly apparitions." (Mark)About the author: Honoré de Balzac born Honoré Balzac; (20 May 1799 - 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers. James called him "really the father of us all."An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office, but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie Humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly owing to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska (née Contessa Rzewuska), a Polish aristocrat and his longtime love. He died in Paris six months later. (wikipedia.org)

La Cousine Bette (French pronunciation: [la kuzin bɛt, Cousin Bette) is an 1846 novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. Set in mid-19th-century Paris, it tells the story of an unmarried middle-aged woman who plots the destruction of her extended family. Bette works with Valérie Marneffe, an unhappily married young lady, to seduce and torment a series of men. One of these is Baron Hector Hulot, husband to Bette's cousin Adeline. He sacrifices his family's fortune and good name to please Valérie, who leaves him for a well-off merchant named Crevel. The book is part of the Scènes de la vie parisienne section of Balzac's novel sequence La Comédie humaine ("The Human Comedy").In the 1840s, a serial format known as the roman-feuilleton was highly popular in France, and the most acclaimed expression of it was the socialist writing of Eugène Sue. Balzac wanted to challenge Sue's supremacy, and prove himself the most capable feuilleton author in France. Writing quickly and with intense focus, Balzac produced La Cousine Bette, one of his longest novels, in two months. It was published in Le Constitutionnel at the end of 1846, then collected with a companion work, Le Cousin Pons, the following year.The novel's characters represent polarities of contrasting morality. The vengeful Bette and disingenuous Valérie stand on one side, with the merciful Adeline and her patient daughter Hortense on the other. The patriarch of the Hulot family, meanwhile, is consumed by his own sexual desire. Hortense's husband, the Polish exile Wenceslas Steinbock, represents artistic genius, though he succumbs to uncertainty and lack of motivation. Balzac based the character of Bette in part on his mother and the poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. At least one scene involving Baron Hulot was likely based on an event in the life of Balzac's friend, the novelist Victor Hugo.La Cousine Bette is considered Balzac's last great work. His trademark use of realist detail combines with a panorama of characters returning from earlier novels. Several critics have hailed it as a turning point in the author's career, and others have called it a prototypical naturalist text. It has been compared to William Shakespeare's Othello as well as Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. The novel explores themes of vice and virtue, as well as the influence of money on French society. Bette's relationship with Valérie is also seen as an important exploration of homoerotic themes. A number of film versions of the story have been produced, including a 1971 BBC mini-series starring Margaret Tyzack and Helen Mirren, and a 1998 feature film with Jessica Lange in the title role. (wikipedia.org)

The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which features Native American characters. The epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha, a Dakota woman. Events in the story are set in the Pictured Rocks area of Michigan on the south shore of Lake Superior. Longfellow's poem is based on oral traditions surrounding the figure of Manabozho, but it also contains his own innovations.Longfellow drew some of his material from his friendship with Ojibwe Chief Kahge-ga-gah-bowh, who would visit at Longfellow's home. He also had frequent encounters with Black Hawk and other Sauk people on Boston Common, and he drew from Algic Researches (1839) and other writings by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an ethnographer and United States Indian agent, and from Heckewelder's Narratives. In sentiment, scope, overall conception, and many particulars, Longfellow insisted, "I can give chapter and verse for these legends. Their chief value is that they are Indian legends."Longfellow had originally planned on following Schoolcraft in calling his hero Manabozho, the name in use at the time among the Ojibwe of the south shore of Lake Superior for a figure of their folklore who was a trickster and transformer. But he wrote in his journal entry for June 28, 1854: "Work at 'Manabozho;' or, as I think I shall call it, 'Hiawatha'-that being another name for the same personage." Longfellow was following Schoolcraft, but he was mistaken in thinking that the names were synonymous. The name Hiawatha is derived from a historical figure associated with the League of the Iroquois, then located in New York and Pennsylvania. The popularity of Longfellow's poem nevertheless led to the name "Hiawatha" becoming attached to a number of locales and enterprises in the Great Lakes region. (wikipedia.org)About the author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 - March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include the poems "Paul Revere's Ride", "The Song of Hiawatha", and "Evangeline". He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the fireside poets from New England.Longfellow was born in Portland, District of Maine, Massachusetts (now Portland, Maine). He graduated from Bowdoin College and became a professor there and, later, at Harvard College after studying in Europe. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841).He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, and he lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts.His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught fire. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on translating works from foreign languages. Longfellow died in 1882.Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and had success overseas. He has been criticized for imitating European styles and writing poetry that was too sentimental. (wikipedia.org)

Published for the first time in 1851, this long narrative poem is based on Hartmann von der Aue's treatment of a psycho-sexual German medieval romance Poor Henry, the hero renamed Prince Henry of Hoheneck.He has fatal disease that can only be cured if a virgin agrees to die for him. He speaks to Lucifer and then finds a young peasant lady willing to do it. She turns herself in, the prince repents and grabs her back, he is miraculously cured and then marries her. Happy ending, after a very, very long reading..."Lucifer._ It is! It assuages every pain, Cures all disease, and gives againTo age the swift delights of youth.Inhale its fragrance." (Razvan Banciu) About the author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 - March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include the poems "Paul Revere's Ride", "The Song of Hiawatha", and "Evangeline". He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the fireside poets from New England.Longfellow was born in Portland, District of Maine, Massachusetts (now Portland, Maine). He graduated from Bowdoin College and became a professor there and, later, at Harvard College after studying in Europe. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841).He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, and he lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts.His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught fire. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on translating works from foreign languages. Longfellow died in 1882.Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and had success overseas. He has been criticized for imitating European styles and writing poetry that was too sentimental. (wikipedia.org)

Tales of a Wayside Inn is a collection of poems by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The book, published in 1863, depicts a group of people at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts as each tells a story in the form of a poem. The characters telling the stories at the inn are based on real people. The compilation, which Longfellow originally wanted to title "The Sudbury Tales", proved to be popular and he issued two additional series in the 1870s. The poems in the collection are told by a group of adults in the tavern of the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, 20 miles from the poet's home in Cambridge, and a favorite resort for parties from Harvard College. The narrators are friends of the author who, though they were not named, were so plainly characterized as to be easily recognizable. Among those of wider fame are Ole Bull, the violinist, and Thomas William Parsons, the poet and translator of Dante. Each of the three parts has a prelude and a finale, and there are interludes which link together the tales and introduce the narrators. The prelude for the first part begins: "One Autumn night, in Sudbury town, Across the meadows bare and brown, The windows of the wayside innGleamed red with fire-light..." In 1920, the Humane Society of Boston filmed a a movie version of the "Bell of Atri" in Dedham, Massachusetts. The film was used as part of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' "Be Kind to Our Dumb Animals" campaign. The film was lost in a fire at the MSPCA in 2008. (wikipedia.org)About the author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 - March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include the poems "Paul Revere's Ride", "The Song of Hiawatha", and "Evangeline". He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the fireside poets from New England.Longfellow was born in Portland, District of Maine, Massachusetts (now Portland, Maine). He graduated from Bowdoin College and became a professor there and, later, at Harvard College after studying in Europe. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841).He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, and he lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts.His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught fire. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on translating works from foreign languages. Longfellow died in 1882.Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and had success overseas. He has been criticized for imitating European styles and writing poetry that was too sentimental. (wikipedia.org)

Hyperion: A Romance is one of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's earliest works, published in 1839. It is a prose romance which was published alongside his first volume of poems, Voices of the Night.Hyperion follows a young American protagonist named Paul Flemming as he travels through Germany. The character's wandering is partially inspired by the death of a friend. The author had also recently lost someone close to him. Longfellow's first wife, Mary Storer Potter, died in Rotterdam in the Netherlands after a miscarriage in 1836; Longfellow was deeply saddened by her death and noted in his diary: "All day I am weary and sad ... and at night I cry myself to sleep like a child."Hyperion was inspired in part by his trips to Europe as well as his then-unsuccessful courtship of Frances Appleton, daughter of businessman Nathan Appleton. In the book, Flemming falls in love with an Englishwoman, Mary Ashburton, who rejects him. (wikipedia.org)About the author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 - March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include the poems "Paul Revere's Ride", "The Song of Hiawatha", and "Evangeline". He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the fireside poets from New England.Longfellow was born in Portland, District of Maine, Massachusetts (now Portland, Maine). He graduated from Bowdoin College and became a professor there and, later, at Harvard College after studying in Europe. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841).He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, and he lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts.His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught fire. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on translating works from foreign languages. Longfellow died in 1882.Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and had success overseas. He has been criticized for imitating European styles and writing poetry that was too sentimental. (wikipedia.org)

Honoré de Balzac born Honoré Balzac; (20 May 1799 - 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers. James called him "really the father of us all."An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office, but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie Humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly owing to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Häska (née Contessa Rzewuska), a Polish aristocrat and his longtime love. He died in Paris six months later. (wikipedia.org)

Une double famille (A Second Home) is a lengthy short story by Honoré de Balzac. The story first appeared in 1830 under the title La femme vertueuse (The Virtuous Woman). It was subsequently published in 1832 by Mame et Delaunay as part of Balzac's Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes from Private Life). In 1835, it appeared, in an edition by Madame Béchet, in the collection Études de m¿urs (Studies of Manners). The novel only acquired its present title in 1842, when the fifth edition appeared in Volume I of the Scenes from Private Life, which was also the first volume of Balzac's La Comédie humaine.The novel comprises two parts, two stories, which are really two sides of the same story. The plot revolves around an act of adultery - a double life, a second family - which is in some sense justified. From the beginning, the setting recalls the atmosphere of Balzac's Ferragus. In a squalid house, in a sordid neighbourhood, an old woman offers an angelic creature - her own daughter - to passers by. The Comte de Granville, unhappily married to a sanctimonious woman, falls in love with this grisette. An aristocrat and a magistrate of integrity, he had made a name for himself in the Gondreville affair, which Balzac would later recount in Une ténébreuse affaire (A Murky Affair).In this work, the author protests against the excesses of bigotry and, according to a principle dear to him, he contrasts the interior design of an aristocratic house with both the grime of a squalid Parisian neighbourhood and the cheerful décor of a grisette's apartment (another familiar theme in the works of Balzac). Madame du Granville's home is, in his eyes: a place of cold, arid solemnity, of moral rectitude and narrow-mindedness. Whereas the grisette's flat, like that of La Torpille (Esther Van Gobseck), is a place of delights. (wikipedia.org)About the author:Honoré de Balzac born Honoré Balzac; (20 May 1799 - 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers. James called him "really the father of us all."An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office, but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie Humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience. ... (wikipedia.org)

Two aristocratic sisters raised in religious seclusion by their pious mother are suddenly married off into the glittering, treacherous Paris society of the 1830's, the younger to a domineering banker, the elder to a humane and loving count.This excellent novella from the 'private life' collection of Balzac's Comédie Humaine focusses on the elder daughter, Madame Felix de Vandenesse, who has no need to be dissatisfied with her husband, yet naively invites a scandal on herself when she is manoeuvred into an affair by more sophisticated and mischievous ladies.Her chosen lover, Raoul Nathan, is an ambitious playwright and would-be politician, a man of some genius but with feet of clay. Despite having a devoted mistress, the vaudeville actress Florine, Nathan recklessly courts Madame Felix, little knowing that he to is the dupe of wiser minds.Though the story is slight and contains no great depths of either drama or tragedy, I still found A Daughter of Eve to be something of a delight, due in no small measure to Balzac's incomparably rich powers of physical description and eye for detail. ...( Perry Whitford)About the author:Honoré de Balzac born Honoré Balzac; (20 May 1799 - 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers. James called him "really the father of us all."An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office, but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie Humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly owing to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Häska (née Contessa Rzewuska), a Polish aristocrat and his longtime love. He died in Paris six months later. (wikipedia.org)

Сере́бряный го́лубь - первый роман Андрея Белого, один из ярчайших образцов прозы русского символизма. Публиковался в журнале Весы с марта по декабрь 1909 года. Молодой писатель Пётр Дарьяльский - интеллигент, воспитанный в лоне западной культуры, - проводит лето в деревне вместе с приятелем Шмидтом, увлечённым мистико-теософскими штудиями, и совсем юной невестой Катей. Девушка живёт в Гуголеве, оскудевающей усадьбе её бабушки, баронессы Тодрабе-Граабен. Внимание Дарьяльского невольно приковывает рябая деревенская баба Матрёна из соседнего села Целебеево. Он разрывается между плотским влечением к Матрёне и духовным стремлением к Кате.Старый купец Еропегин из уездного города Лихова, памятуя о том, что баронесса в своё время отвергла его ухаживания, грозит гордой старухе разорением. Придя в ужас от перспективы расстаться с имением, баронесса в запальчивости оскорбляет попавшегося под руку Дарьяльского. Он покидает Гуголево и переезжает на восток в Целебеево, где нанимается на работу к столяру Кудеярову, в чьём доме живёт Матрёна. Утончённый москвич рад возможности порвать с западными ценностями и погрузиться в самые недра былинной Руси. С молчаливого согласия столяра Матрёна и Дарьяльский становятся любовниками.Хромой столяр Кудеяров - один из предводителей секты белых голубей, проповедующих, подобно хлыстам, чувственный мистицизм. Это он свёл Матрёну с Дарьяльским в надежде на то, что от их связи родится чудо-младенец. О скором пришествии нового Спасителя оповещены и другие голуби. Поскольку чаемого зачатия не происходит, а Дарьяльский начинает подумывать о примирении с Катей, столяр строит план физического устранения чужака, оказавшегося якобы недостойным божественной благодати.... (ru.wikipedia.org)