Among his last completed works were the illustrations for Balzac's Droll Stories ( 1961 ) and for his own poem The Rhyme Of The Flying Bomb ( 1962 ), which he had written some 15 years earlier.

Many of Balzac's works have been made into or have inspired films, and they are a continuing source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers and critics.

" Realism is nothing if not urban ", notes critic Peter Brooks ; the scene of a young man coming into the city to find his fortune is ubiquitous in the realist novel, and appears repeatedly in Balzac's works, such as Illusions Perdues.

Marx's work Das Kapital also makes constant reference to the works of Balzac and urged Engels to read Balzac's work The Unknown Masterpiece.

Marcel Proust similarly learned from the Realist example ; he adored Balzac and studied his works carefully, although he criticised what he called Balzac's " vulgarity.

* Honoré de Balzac's works: text, concordances and frequency lists

8vo ), the French translation of Hoffman's tales ( 1843, 8 vo ), the first collective edition of Balzac's works ( Paris, Houssiaux, 1850, 20 vols.

Balzac's later works are decidedly influenced by the popular " roman feuilleton " ( especially in the works of Eugène Sue which concentrate on depicting the secret worlds of crime and vice that hide below the surface of French society ) and by the melodrama.

Many of Balzac's shorter works have elements taken from the popular " roman noir " or gothic novel, but often the fantastic elements are used for very different purposes in Balzac's work.

As depicted in his works, Balzac's spiritual philosophy suggests that individuals have a limited quantity of spiritual energy and that this energy is dissipated through creative or intellectual work or through physical activity ( including sex ), and this is made emblematic in his philosophical tale La Peau de chagrin, in which a magical wild ass's skin confers on its owner unlimited powers, but shrinks each time it is used in science.

Balzac's final plan ( 1845 ) of the Comédie Humaine is as follows ( projected works are not included ; dates are those of initial publication, whether or not the work was initially conceived as part of the Comédie Humaine ):

Exercises and examples for students were based on rendering literature such as Honoré de Balzac's Le Père Goriot.

Many of Balzac's tormented characters were created in the small second-floor bedroom.

After a series of economic setbacks, health problems, and prohibitions from the Tsar, the couple were finally able to wed. On 14 March 1850, with Balzac's health in serious decline, they drove from her estate in Wierzchownia ( village of Verkhivnia ) to a church in Berdyczów ( city of Berdychiv, today in Ukraine ) and were married.

" " Balzac's characters ", Robb notes, " were as real to him as if he were observing them in the outside world.

Many of the novels in this period, including Balzac's, were published in newspapers in serial form, and the immensely popular realist " roman feuilleton " tended to specialize in portraying the hidden side of urban life ( crime, police spies, criminal slang ), as in the novels of Eugène Sue.

Although his mind was receiving nourishment, the same could not be said for Balzac's body.

This was to be Balzac's life work and his greatest achievement.

In Europe, he translated Balzac's Contes drôlatiques, which was published in 1874 by Chatto and Windus ; but it was considered too racy and was withdrawn, only to be reissued in 1903.

At the turn of the century, Saintsbury edited and introduced an English edition of Honoré de Balzac's novel series La Comédie humaine, translated by Ellen Marriage and published in 1895-8 by J. M. Dent.

* Balzac's 1834 alchemical novel " La Recherche de l ' Absolu " has been published in English both as " The Quest of the Absolute " and " The Alkahest ".

Honoré ( so named after Saint Honoré of Amiens, who is commemorated on 16 May, four days before Balzac's birthday ) was actually the second child born to the Balzacs ; exactly one year previous, Louis-Daniel had been born, but he lived for only a month.

Balzac's first project was a libretto for a comic opera called Le Corsaire, based on Lord Byron's The Corsair.

Still, Garbo signed a contract in 1948 for $ 200, 000 with producer Walter Wanger, who had produced Queen Christina, to shoot a picture based on Balzac's La Duchesse de Langeais.

Saumur is also the scene for Balzac's novel Eugénie Grandet, written by the French author in 1833, and the title of a song from hard rock band Trust ( whose lyrics express their poor opinion of the city: narrow-minded, bourgeois and militaristic ).

A favorite of Balzac's, the book quickly won widespread popularity and has often been adapted for film and the stage.

He introduces this notion in the epigraph to the essay, taken from Honoré de Balzac's story Sarrasine in which a male protagonist mistakes a castrato for a woman and falls in love with him.

For example, Célestin Crevel first appeared in Balzac's 1837 novel César Birotteau, working for the title character.

Anthony Pugh, in his book Balzac's Recurring Characters, says that the technique is employed " for the most part without that feeling of self-indulgence that mars some of Balzac's later work.

'") Her cruelty and lust for revenge lead critics to call her " demonic " and " one of Balzac's most terrifying creations ".

Balzac's inspiration for the characters of Hector and Adeline remain unclear, but several critics have been eager to speculate.

Others indicate that Balzac's interest in the theatre was an important reason for the inclusion of melodramatic elements.

Some have compared her to Balzac's title character in Le Père Goriot, who sacrifices himself for his daughters.

Like Raphael de Valentin in Balzac's 1831 novel La Peau de chagrin, Hulot is left with nothing but " vouloir ": desire, a force which is both essential for human existence and eventually apocalyptic.

Balzac's novel has been adapted several times for the screen.

Other opera librettos include La rose de Terone ( 1840 ), Si j ' étais roi ( 1852 ), Le muletier de Tolède ( 1854 ) ( on which Michael Balfe's The Rose of Castille ( 1857 ) was based ), and À Clichy ( 1854 ) by Adolphe Adam, Massenet's early Don César de Bazan ( 1872 ) and Hervé's La nuit aux soufflets ( 1884 ) He prepared for the stage Balzac's posthumous comedy Mercadet ou le faiseur, presented at the Théâtre du Gymnase Marie Bell in 1851.

* The Cat " a story for music ", 1979, in Restoration, London, Methuen, 1982, from Honoré de Balzac's Peines d ' amour d ' une chatte anglaise, music by H. W.

Beevers has worked extensively at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, both as an actor ( including the title role in Jules Romain's Doctor Knock, 1994 ); and as an adaptor / director of George Eliot's novel Adam Bede ( February 1990 ), for which he won a Time Out Award, and Balzac's Père Goriot ( February 1994 ).

The importance of the woman is underlined by Balzac's contention that, while a biologist may gloss over the differences between a male and female lion, " in Society the woman is not simply the female of the man ".

In Honoré de Balzac's novel Letters of Two Brides, two women who became friends during their education at a convent correspond over a 17 year period, exchanging letters describing their lives.

Balzac's mother, born Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, came from a family of haberdashers in Paris.

Balzac's house in Paris, seen from the Rue Berton.

The centrality of a father in this novel matches Balzac's own position – not only as mentor to his troubled young secretary, Jules Sandeau, but also the fact that he had ( most likely ) fathered a child, Marie-Caroline, with his otherwise-married lover, Maria Du Fresnay.

Lucien's journalism work is informed by Balzac's own failed ventures in the field.

Balzac's health was deteriorating by this point, making the completion of this pair of books a significant accomplishment.

Balzac's work habits are legendary – he did not work quickly, but toiled with an incredible focus and dedication.

He had been visited that day by Victor Hugo, who later served as pallbearer and eulogist at Balzac's funeral.

Balzac's extensive use of detail, especially the detail of objects, to illustrate the lives of his characters made him an early pioneer of literary realism.

For example, Balzac's friend Hyacinthe de Latouche had knowledge of hanging wallpaper.

Some critics consider Balzac's writing exemplary of naturalism – a more pessimistic and analytical form of realism, which seeks to explain human behavior as intrinsically linked with the environment.

One critic explained that " there is a center and a circumference to Balzac's world.

Balzac's use of repeating characters, moving in and out of the Comédies books, strengthens the realist representation.

A nearly infinite reserve of energy propels the characters in Balzac's novels.