Honoré de Balzac

20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist and playwright, a founder of literary realism. His vast interconnected cycle of novels and stories, La Comédie humaine, presents a panoramic portrait of French society in the decades after the fall of Napoleon.

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Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Honoré de Balzac.

Life events

Born in Tours, France
20 May 1799

Honoré de Balzac was born in Tours into a family that had risen from peasant origins to the bourgeoisie.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Studied law at the Sorbonne and worked as a legal clerk
1816 – 1819

Balzac studied law in Paris and clerked in legal offices before abandoning the profession to pursue writing.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Failed ventures in publishing and printing
1825 – 1828

Balzac's attempts at running a publishing house and a printing business ended in heavy debts that burdened him for the rest of his life.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Published Les Chouans, his first novel under his own name
1829

Les Chouans, a historical novel about royalist insurrection in Brittany, was Balzac's first work published under his own name and his first critical success.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Began correspondence with Ewelina Hańska
1832

Balzac received an anonymous letter from the Polish noblewoman Ewelina Hańska, beginning a celebrated correspondence and long-distance romance.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Published Le Père Goriot
1835

Le Père Goriot became one of Balzac's most celebrated novels and pioneered his device of recurring characters across La Comédie humaine.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Adopted the collective title La Comédie humaine
1842

Balzac organized his novels and stories into a single vast cycle, La Comédie humaine, intended to depict all of French society.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Married Ewelina Hańska in Berdychiv
14 March 1850

After a courtship of nearly two decades, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska in Berdychiv (in present-day Ukraine), five months before his death.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Died in Paris
18 August 1850

Balzac died in Paris at the age of 51; Victor Hugo delivered the eulogy at his funeral, and he was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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