Balzac - Hardcover

Pritchett, V. S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039448357X ISBN 13: 9780394483573

Publisher: Knopf, Alfred A., 1973

Synopsis

Balzac was one of the founding geniuses among the world's great novelists. V. S. Pritchett presents a life-size portrait of the man inside the artist, the exuberant, uncouth provincial who combined encyclopaedic knowledge with the life of an exhibitionist and a would-be dandy, a gourmet, a disastrous financial speculator, a successful pursuer of aristocratic women, a born salesman and an untiring traveller. Yet, with some truth, Balzac called himself a monk, working his sixteen hours a day and keeping going on an ocean of strong coffee. When he died, he left the huge monument of the Com-die Humaine, an unsurpassed picture of French society from the rise and fall of Napoleon until the revolution of 1848.

About this title

From the Publisher:

After his brilliant lectures in The Living Novel on the English, Russian and French novelists, and his celebrated portrait of a spendthrift in A Cab at the Door, V.S. Pritchett turns his command of irony and comedy to the most extravagant of all great novelists, Honoré de Balzac.

About the Author:

VS Pritchett was a novelist, short-story writer, critic and traveller. He was the leading critic of the New Statesman.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf, Alfred A.
• Publication date: 1973
• ISBN 10: 039448357X
• ISBN 13: 9780394483573
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1