Cousin Bette · Poor Relations, Part One

Presenting "Old Goriot and Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac with Illustrations by Nicholas Tamblyn and Katherine Eglund." These classics are part of The Great Books Series by Golding Books.

The classic translation of Old Goriot is by Ellen Marriage, and of Cousin Bette by James Waring.

Honoré de Balzac was born in Tours, France, in 1799. Conceived as a novel sequence after he had already written several novels, the panorama of post-Napoleonic French life known as La Comédie Humaine (comprising 91 finished novels, stories, and analytical essays, and half as many unfinished works, some existing in title only) is considered to be his magnum opus. The interlinked novels and stories depict French life during the Restoration (1815-1830) and the July Monarchy (1830-1848); in their realism and variety they have influenced numerous writers then and since. His health having worsened for some time, Balzac died five months after his marriage to the Polish Countess Ewelina Hańska, his long-time correspondent, at the age of 51.