Balzac honoré de

1874 · 062261 — London: Chatto & Windus 1874. First Edition. Hardcover. Good/No Jacket as Issued. Gustave Dore. Half cloth binding with dark brown buckram cloth boards the corners of the covers seem to be burgundy leather. Frontispiece. Contains 425 wood-cut illustations by the celebrated artist Gustave Dore. xxxii 646pp. Book is missing the end of the last story "The Fair Imperia Married" as well as the Epilogue about 5-10 estimated pages. Portions of covers are rubbed and stained. Front hinge starting and spine has some cracks. A few pages have some writing on them. Good only. Full refund if not satisfied. "Honoré de Balzac born Honoré Balzac; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850 was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life is generally viewed as his magnum opus. Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris a backdrop for much of his writing takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers including the novelists Émile Zola Charles Dickens Gustave Flaubert and Henry James filmmaker François Truffaut as well as important philosophers such as Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx." Chatto & Windus hardcover