Heath's Modern Language Series. Cinq Scènes de La Comédie Humaine: Selected and Edited with Introduction and Notes

By all accounts, Honoré de Balzac is France's greatest novelist and, in the opinion of many of the world's greatest, a fair judgment if the scope of vision and depth of understanding of the human character are preferable to polished diction and aesthetic flair. Balzac grew almost steadily in the eyes of critics in France, and his place among English readers is evidenced by the recent and almost simultaneous appearance of four translations of his very extensive works. Balzac has grouped his works under the general title "The Human Comedy", the usual edition of which is forty-seven volumes and almost 16,000 pages. Here are five stories that complement each other and together provide a better and more complete picture of Balzac's powers than any single novel of the same length. The foregoing suggests that these stories will pay off with thoughtful reading. There is nothing here that a schoolboy or girl could not read, but the book will be better appreciated in the later years of high school or college students, and it is for them that the short notes were compiled. What can be found in an ordinary French dictionary or in ordinary school textbooks, there is no need to look here. The text is presented in original - in French.