Death of Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac died on 18 August 1850 in Paris, aged 51. A French novelist and playwright born in Tours, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of literary realism. He spent most of his career writing La Comédie humaine, a vast cycle of nearly a hundred novels and stories that portrays French society after the fall of Napoleon, in Paris and the provinces. Among its best-known titles are Eugénie Grandet, Père Goriot, Lost Illusions and Cousin Bette. He worked at an extraordinary pace, often through the night, fuelled by large amounts of coffee, and was repeatedly beset by debts. He married the Polish noblewoman Ewelina Hańska only a few months before his death in Paris.

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