Cousin Bette (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Balzac, Honoré De

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140441603 ISBN 13: 9780140441604

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2004

Synopsis

A tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, and a portrayal of the bourgeois society of 1840s Paris. It features poor, plain spinster Bette who is compelled to survive on the patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philandering Baron Hulot and their daughter Hortense.

About this title

Review:

Raine's translations restore Balzac to his passionate and efficient outrage upon the expectations of fiction. This best of his novels is worthy to be 'ours'--and now it is --Richard Howard

The novel exemplifies what Henry James described as Balzac s huge, all-compassing, all-desiring, all-devouring love of reality --V. S. Pritchett

Synopsis:

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. Already deeply resentful of their wealth, when Bette learns that the man she is in love with plans to marry Hortense, she becomes consumed by the desire to exact her revenge and dedicates herself to the destruction of the Hulot family, plotting their ruin with patient, silent malice. "Cousin Bette" is a gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, and a brilliant portrayal of the grasping, bourgeois society of 1840s Paris. The culmination of the Comedie humaine, Balzac's epic chronicle of his times, it is one of his greatest triumphs as a novelist.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0140441603
• ISBN 13: 9780140441604
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464