The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

19th century French author Honore de Balzac is best known for his multi-volume collection of interlinked novels, stories, and essays called “The Human Comedy”. This collection of works includes some ninety-one finished and forty-six unfinished works which depict the intricacies of French society during the first half of the 19th century, a period of time which is referred to separately as the “Restoration”, from 1815 to 1830, and the “July Monarchy”, from 1830 to 1849. Balzac chose the title of “The Human Comedy” as a reference to Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”; however Balzac’s works contrast those of Dante’s in the fact that instead of focusing on the theological world they focus on the reality of human life at the time in which he lived. This period was a time of great change in which the importance of nobility and the economic and political power of the peerage was slowly being displaced by the rise of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. This collection of ten stories includes some of the more important examples of the shorter works in Balzac’s magnum opus, “The Human Comedy”, which will be forever remembered for its pioneering influence on the modernist realist movement in literature. This edition includes a biographical afterword.