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Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on the condescending patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philandering Baron Hulot and their daughter Hortense.

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Monsieur Goriot is one of a disparate group of lodgers at Mademe Vauquer's dingy Parisian boarding house. At first his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are mysteriously reduced he becomes shunned by those around him, and soon his only remaining visitors are his two beautifully dressed daughters.

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Twelve stories are representative of the tragic, melodramatic, sentimental, pathetic, and comic aspects of Balzac's art and testify to his keen sense of irony when observing the human condition.

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In 1842, eight years before his death, Balzac described Ursule Mirouet as the masterpiece of all the studies of human society that he had written. In this title, the twin themes of redemption and rebirth are illuminated by a consistently passionate rejection of both philosophic and practical materialism in favour of love.

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During the 1840s, a bourgeois Parisian family is brought to ruin by the machinations of an embittered spinster.

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Pons is an ageing musician, and believes that fame has fallen to nothing. Living with his friend, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to fine dining in the company relatives, and a dedication to the collection of antiques. This novel concerns French urban society: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing consideration of human nature.

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Philippe and Joseph Bridau are two extremely different brothers. The elder, Philippe, is a superficially heroic soldier and adored by their mother Agathe. He is nonetheless a bitter figure, secretly gambling away her savings after a brief but glorious career as Napoleon's aide-de-camp at the battle of Montereau.

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Balzac is concerned with the choice between ruthless self-gratification and asceticism, dissipation and restraint, in a novel that is powerful in its symbolism and realistic depiction of decadence.

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"This book was originally published as Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes, appearing in four parts from 1835-1847"--Title page verso.

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Part of Balzacs La Comdie humaine cycle, Colonel Chabert is a poignant tale about the pursuit of justice, as well as a portrait of Frances transition from the Napoleonic Empire to the Restoration.

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In a gloomy house in provincial Saumur, the miser Grandet lives with his wife and daughter, Eugenie, whose lives are stifled and overshadowed by his obsession with gold. Guarding his piles of glittering treasures and his only child equally closely, he will let no one near them.

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The three short novels that make up this book are concerned in part with the activities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secret society in nineteenth-century France.

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Lucien Chardon, an aspiring young author, leaves his small provincial hometown and attempts to succeed in Parisian literary circles of the early nineteenth century.

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"Henri de Marsay believes neither in man nor woman, God nor devil. He believes in Paris, a city that readily accommodates his pursuit of sensual pleasure. It is in the Tuileries, just outside the Cafe des Feuillants, that Henri de Marsay first catches sight of the girl with the golden eyes and can almost believe in love"--

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