Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright, born in Tours on 20 May 1799 and died in Paris on 18 August 1850. He trained in law but turned to writing, and spent his early years in debt after failed business ventures in publishing and printing. He wrote at a furious pace, famously fuelled by strong coffee, often working through the night.

His great achievement is La Comédie humaine, a vast series of linked novels and stories that portray French society after Napoleon. Characters reappear from book to book, so that Paris and the provinces feel like a single living world. Balzac showed how money, ambition, class and family shape ordinary lives, and he did so with sharp detail and deep sympathy. He is regarded as a founder of European realism and has influenced novelists ever since.