de Vendôme, which would be his home for the next six years. During this time, he would see his mother twice. Even before entering the school, Balzac was an avid reader of adventure stories such asRobinson Crusoe (1719), The Iliad (c. 800 b.c.e.), accounts of Napoléon’s victories, and the Bible. His solitary time was spent reading and inventing small amusing gadgets, such as the three-nib pen, a time-saver for students required to write lines.

Establishing a rather mediocre record in Latin, geography, history, physics, chemistry, fencing, music, and mathematics, Balzac was sent in 1815 to the Collège Charlemagne in Paris, where the concierge supplied him with forbidden books and coffee—a status symbol because it was a product from the far-off colonies, and later in his life, the fuel of his fictional world. From 1816 to 1818, he studied law at the École de Droit in addition to history, philosophy, and literature at the Sorbonne. Balzac’s intellectual development was nurtured by a limitless curiosity, which he hoped to satisfy by following a list he had drawn up of 164 items of future research from gastronomy, acoustics, zoology, and cosmography to differential calculus, cereal-growing, and Presbyterianism. By this time, his will to achieve greatness was clearly established. Despite being offered a full-time position in a Paris law firm, with the chance to take it over after a short apprenticeship, in 1819 Balzac was allowed by his parents to dedicate the following two years to his dream of becoming a writer—with the condition, however, that he live an invisible and disciplined life in Paris, pretending to be visiting relatives in the south of France.

During this time, Balzac, when not immersed in Descartes and Spinoza at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, discovered the novel, then considered to be the type of book read by servants to idle women. To an educated person, such works lacked subtlety and philosophical importance. Tales of the supernatural and gothic novels, for example, were in demand. Balzac became spellbound by this new literary genre, which did not bear the rigor of rhymes but which, with the spread of literacy, could well be his road to glory. Balzac’s earliest unfinished novels—Sténie, Falthurne, and Corsino—date from this period.

In 1821, Balzac and Auguste de l’Égreville, a twenty-eight-year-old writer, entered into a professional relationship whereby Balzac would write some novels under single authorship (under his name or a pseudonym) and some in collaboration with l’Égreville, all of which the latter would sell to publishers. In 1822, five such novels were published. Thus began Balzac’s first commercial literary enterprises. Living on his own and practically a kept man, deeply in debt to his lover, Laure de Berny, a married woman, Balzac set up shop as a printer seven years after embarking on a literary career. Although monetary rewards were scarce, he came to know the writers Victor Hugo and Alfred de Vigny. Balzac’s life as a printer came to an end in 1828, when his business collapsed.

Published in 1829, Le dernier chouan (renamed Les Chouans; translated as The Chouans, 1890), the first building block in the construction of The Human Comedy, depicts a monarchist Brittany in rebellion against the revolutionary national government of 1799. This work heralded the creation of a new type of historical novel in which the writer reveals historical trends by using representative characters or “types” in the place of known historical figures. Personally, this period was difficult for Balzac because of a painful collaboration with Hyacinthe de Latouche, his intimate friend, agent, and editor. His relationship with Latouche provides the first glimpses of his versatile sexuality. Balzac’s tendencies can be best described not as homosexual nor heterosexual, but simply as sexual. Because of its connotation of sexual deviance in the mid-nineteenth century, male homosexuality was merely touched on in stories of hermaphrodites, such as Henride Latouche’s Fragoletta (1829), Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835; English translation, 1897), and—obliquely—Balzac’s Séraphita (1835; English translation, 1889). Yet Balzac’s introduction of homosexual heroes—Vautrin, Lucien de Rubempré, and Eugène de Rastignac—through subtle and ambiguous descriptions created literary models in the same way that French literature abounded in misers, jealous lovers, and hypochondriacs.

Balzac’s rebirth as a writer coincided in 1829 with the death of his father. He regretted enormously that his father had not lived to see him become famous under his own name, but he took heed of his father’s warning that his mother would be the strongest and most cunning enemy he would ever meet. It was she, scandalized by her son’s unending string of debts, who now controlled the family purse strings.

In 1832, when his mental health had become an object of concern and amusement to other people, Balzac left Paris for Saché in Touraine, where he wished to compose a rebuttal to the gossips. This work would evolve into the novel Louis Lambert (1832; English translation, 1889), the story of a genius who transcends the normal plane of reality and goes insane. Balzac’s self-diagnosis of aphasia would now seem accurate, for verbal and visual hallucinations, probably attributable to a congenital weakness, recurred throughout his life. During the month spent at Saché, Balzac began to live in his own illusions, convincing himself that he had completed novels barely sketched out. This period was quite short; although it was troublesome for publishers who were taken in by Balzac’s delusions, it suggested to Balzac the possibility of combining reality and dream in a fictional world.

Through his correspondence with the Russian countess Eveline Hanska, begun in 1832, Balzac returned to reality. Signing herself “The Stranger” in an anonymous letter mailed from Russia, she chastised Balzac for portraying women as evil monsters in La Peau de chagrin (1831; The Wild Ass’s Skin). In 1833, the two finally met, in Neuchâtel. Until the end of his life, the countess would remain a figure of adoration and inspiration. Following their rapturous meeting, Balzac was hit by a flood of creativity, and he returned to Paris to work on Eugénie Grandet (1833; English translation, 1859), which some critics have called his greatest novel.

By the 1830’s, Balzac was aging rapidly and, once again, found himself in very deep debt. In mid-1836, he suffered a mild stroke and began having chronic medical problems such as backaches, chest pains, and bronchitis. He felt himself to be suffering from a physical melancholy, with his mind becoming dull from isolation. Overwork became a necessity to stave off bankruptcy but did little to improve his health. In 1836 and 1837 he wrote four novels—L’interdiction (1836; Interdiction, 1895), La Vieille Fille (1836; The Old Maid, 1898), Les Employés (1837; The Civil Service, 1896), and Histoire de la grandeur et de la décadence de César Birroteau (1837; The Rise and Fall of César Birotteau, 1860)—as well as four short stories, and, among other pieces, the end of Le Lys dans la vallée (1834; The Lily in the Valley, 1896). He reentered the world of journalism, drafted plays, and for two months worked from midnight to six o’clock in the morning. The revenues from these works enabled him to pay off a substantial portion of his debts. Yet his wish to achieve stylistic perfection forced him to pay for the correction of proofs out of his own pocket, often with advances received from publishers. This endless cycle of debt continued until his death.

In 1842, the preface to The Human Comedy appeared. It reveals a comparison of human types to animal species, a theory that all creation proceeded from a single, primordial entity and diversified under the influence of environment, the destructive power of passion, and the perfecting power of society as guiding principles of Balzac’s panoramic thought. Rather than a direct and complete reflection of the entire work, the preface is an attempt to marry science and art in the nineteenth century, as well as being Balzac’s intellectual biography. By the time the preface was written, Balzac had received word that Eveline Hanska’s husband had died. Almost seven years after they had last seen each other, Balzac was prepared to leave for Russia, where he would apply for Russian citizenship and launch a European magazine in St. Petersburg. His romantic pilgrimage to this city in 1843 was heralded by fellow writers, Aleksandr Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevski among them, as a visit by France’s greatest novelist.

Despite further separations owing to the Russian government’s unwillingness to allow the countess to leave the country, the couple’s love did not waver. In 1846, the future Madame de Balzac suffered a miscarriage; the couple would have had a daughter. In August of 1848, six months after the February Revolution, which saw the fall of the French monarchy, Balzac received extraordinary authorization from the czar to enter Russia, necessary because of social unrest spreading through Europe at that time. At Wierzchownia, the estate of Countess Hanska, Balzac was welcomed into a warm, supportive atmosphere and was revered by servants and peasants. His intention to complete many works proved impossible, however, because of ill health. He was successful in partially correcting the seventeenth volume of The Human Comedy but was unable to bring any other project to fruition. Although the other partially corrected versions survived, and, known as the Furne corrigé, provide the basis for most modern editions, the seventeenth volume did not.

The last year and a half of Balzac’s life was marked by varied afflictions—bronchitis, gastric fever, ophthalmia, peritonitis, and cardiac hypertrophy. Five months before his death in Paris in 1850 at the age of fifty-one, he and Hanska were married. For Balzac, it was the happy conclusion to a great and noble romance that had lasted sixteen years.

Balzac: A Life is a spellbinding account of the man, literary genius, philosopher, and observer of the human condition. Graham Robb’s meticulous and rich anecdotal retelling of Balzac’s ideals, passions, and failures reveals his dichotomous nature, driven by his love for Countess Hanska—partially in compensation, perhaps, for the erratic behavior of his clearly nonmaternal mother—and his boundless intellectual curiosity. Intertwined with probing comments that evoke the richness and complexities of The Human Comedy, this biography is a beautifully told and supremely sensitive rendering of the life of one of France’s most influential writers.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. XCI, September 1, 1994, p. 19.

The Christian Science Monitor. September 29, 1994, p. 13.

Kirkus Reviews. LXII, June 1, 1994, p. 760.

Library Journal. CXIX, July, 1994, p. 94.

London Review of Books. XVI, July 7, 1994, p. 14.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. September 11, 1994, p. 2.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIX, September 11, 1994, p. 14.

Publishers Weekly. CCXLI, June 27, 1994, p. 62.

The Times Literary Supplement. June 17, 1994, p. 8.

The Washington Post Book World. XXIV, August 28, 1994, p. 1.