Albert Savarus

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.6

Word count: 236K words
Chapters: 24

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Albert Savarus by Honoré de BalzacAuthor: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Jun 1, 2004

Editor's review

Albert Savarus is a novella in Balzac's La Comédie humaine, set in provincial society in Besançon, in which an intercepted letter reveals the lawyer Savarus's secret ambitions and a thwarted love affair. The work typically displays Balzac's fine observation of provincial aristocratic and bourgeois life and his cool analysis of ambition, calculation, and emotional entanglement. The narrative uses a frame structure, driven by Rosalie's prying perspective, with letters and reminiscences interwoven, making for a reading experience both dramatic and psychologically deep. For readers wishing to explore Balzac's shorter fiction or study nineteenth-century French provincial society, it is among the more suitable introductory texts. This edition is a Project Gutenberg English e-book; it is not long, making it a useful supplement to Balzac's full-length novels and a convenient way to compare his characterization and narrative technique.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who have read Balzac's major works and want to explore his shorter fiction
Readers interested in the study of nineteenth-century French provincial society and customs
Readers of fiction who enjoy epistolary form, frame narrative, and psychological portrayal
Foreign-literature enthusiasts wanting a shorter entry into the La Comédie humaine system

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting grand historical spectacle and densely packed dramatic conflict
Readers unaccustomed to the slow pace of nineteenth-century realist narrative
Readers who want only a Chinese translation and will not read the English original

Reading tips

Familiarize yourself with the basic framework of La Comédie humaine first; the book's connections between characters and themes will then be easier to grasp.
Note how Rosalie's prying perspective drives the plot; trace the changing relationship between her and Savarus as you read.
Do not pause over provincial social background and legal terminology; read through the plot first, then return to key letter passages.
After finishing, compare with other Balzac novellas and short stories, contrasting their narrative structures and treatments of character fate.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book in English or Chinese?

This is a Project Gutenberg English e-book, in English. For Chinese reading you would need to find a separate Chinese translation; this book does not provide bilingual text.

Can I read this directly without having read other works in La Comédie humaine?

Yes. This is a self-contained novella whose plot stands on its own and does not depend on other works. However, knowing the overall background of La Comédie humaine will better help you understand Balzac's critical perspective on provincial society.

Is this book long, and is it suitable for beginners?

As a novella it is relatively short and works as one of the introductory texts for approaching Balzac. But nineteenth-century realist narrative moves slowly; beginners can read through the plot first without agonizing over every detail.

What edition issues should I note while reading?

This is a Project Gutenberg e-book, a public-domain English text without modern translation notes. Use a dictionary for unfamiliar words and note that nineteenth-century English usage differs somewhat from today's.

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About the author

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850 Author

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a French novelist best known for his vast series La Comédie humaine. The library holds 143 of his works, including Father Goriot, Lost Illusions, Eugénie Grandet, and several volumes of La Comédie humaine. His writing is distinguished by dense detail, a large cast of characters, and an intricate social network, often linking separate works through recurring figures to portray nineteenth-century French society. He excelled at depicting the power of desire, ambition, and money through precise settings and strong narrative tension, and he exerted a lasting influence on later realist fiction. Beyond the broad outline of his life, public information is limited, so this note focuses on the themes and style of his works.