Honor�� de Balzac

Honor�� de Balzac was a French writer whose works have been made into films, such as, Cousin Bette (1998) starring Jessica Lange, and television serials, such as, _Cousin Bette (1971 TV mini-series)_, starring Margaret Tyzack and Helen Mirren.He was born on March 20, 1799, in Tours, France. His father, Bernard Francois Balzac, was a government regional administrator who married a daughter of his boss. The family moved to Paris in 1815. There Balzac went to the Sorbonne, matriculated in jurisprudence and became a clerk for an attorney.Balzac's efforts at publishing his early novels under a pseudonym and in his own publishing company failed, and he went into debt. His activity as a journalist brought recognition among intellectuals for his political and cultural reviews, which resonated with the mixed social expectations during the Restoration. However, with the 1830 fall of the Bourbon monarchy came the new, "bourgeous" (or capitalist) monarchy, a chimera doomed to fall in the 1848... [Details Intro]