Honoré de Balzac

Lore & Background

Honoré de Balzac was born on 20 May 1799 to Bernard-François Balssa and Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier. He was the second child born to the Balzacs: exactly one year earlier Louis-Daniel had been born, but he lived for only a month. Honoré's sisters, Laure and Laurence, were born in 1800 and 1802 and his younger brother, Henry-François, in 1807. As an infant, Balzac was sent to a wet nurse; the following year he was joined by his sister Laure and they spent four years away from home.

At the age of ten, Balzac was sent to the Oratorian grammar school in Vendôme, where he studied for seven years. In 1814, the Balzac family moved to Paris, and Honoré was sent to private tutors and schools for the next two and a half years. In 1816, Balzac entered the Sorbonne, where he studied under François Guizot, Abel-François Villemain, and Victor Cousin. Once his studies were completed, Balzac was persuaded by his father to follow him into the Law; after a stint in the office of Jean-Baptiste Guillonnet-Merville for three years he trained and worked at the office of the notary Édouard-Victor Passez.

In 1819, Passez offered to make Balzac his successor, but his apprentice had had enough of the Law. He announced his intention to become a writer. In April 1819, he moved to the French capital. Balzac's first project was a libretto for a comic opera called Le Corsaire, based on Lord Byron's The Corsair.

In 1820, Balzac completed the five-act verse tragedy Cromwell. In 1821, Balzac met Auguste Le Poitevin, who convinced the author to write short stories. By 1826 he had written nine novels, all published under pseudonyms. In the late 1820s, Balzac dabbled in several business ventures, including publishing and a printing business, which failed.

Reader's Guide

Balzac is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities.

His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and his work has served as a framework for other writers. James called him 'really the father of us all.'

Did You Know?

• Balzac's 1835 novel Le Lys dans la vallée features a cruel governess named Miss Caroline, modelled after his own caregiver.
• Balzac often fell ill at school, finally causing the headmaster to contact his family with news of a 'sort of a coma'.
• Balzac wrote two pamphlets in support of primogeniture and the Society of Jesus.