The Lesser Bourgeoisie

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

Rating 3.8
Word count
973K words
Chapters
98

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Everyday TriviaSocial ObservationPortrait GalleryPower GameHuman NatureComplex HumanityMoral Dilemma19th CenturyPetty BourgeoisieFrench Society

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.The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honoré de BalzacAuthor: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Dec 9, 2004

Editor's review

This English edition of a Balzac work is released free by Project Gutenberg and is one of the detailed observations of middle-class Parisian society within La Comédie humaine. Its value lies not in dramatic plotting but in its almost sociological presentation of petty-bourgeois calculation, anxiety about respectability and the logic of money: offices, families, inheritances and social climbing form a dense network. Reading it, one feels the author's cold-eyed dissection of "respectability" and "interest" in social mobility; the dialogue and scene-setting are information-dense and reward slow reading. The English edition preserves the syntax and narrative rhythm of a nineteenth-century French novel, so for Chinese readers it is both literary reading and language practice. It suits readers as a supplementary volume for understanding Balzac's social panorama rather than as a first choice for beginners; read alongside Le Père Goriot and Eugénie Grandet, it shows more clearly how the author writes different classes differently. The free e-edition makes it easy to search characters and chapters and suits close reading in a book club.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read one chapter first to sort out the characters; use pen and paper or a table to record family and interest ties before continuing.
  2. Read the book alongside Le Père Goriot and observe how Balzac writes the money-mindedness of different classes.
  3. With long sentences, grasp the main clause first rather than checking every word; at the end of each chapter, restate the core conflict in two or three sentences.
  4. Join a book club to read closely by character thread and discuss how "respectability" and "interest" drive each other.

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.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this English edition suitable for readers with only average English? You can try, but be prepared: nineteenth-century fiction has long sentences and many forms of address and French social references. It is best to read a Chinese translation first to grasp the story, then return to selected chapters in English; the e-edition's search function can also help you locate characters repeatedly and reduce frustration.
Where does it stand in Balzac's body of work? It is one of Balzac's series of writings on Parisian society, focusing on the daily life and calculations of the petty bourgeoisie rather than on legendary heroes. It is more a detailed observation of social manners, suitable as extended reading after the major works rather than as a substitute for introductory classics such as Le Père Goriot.
How much French historical background do I need? You need not master it systematically, but a basic sense of nineteenth-century French money relations, inheritance law and social climbing will help. The difficulties lie more in character relationships and narrative density; read first with the thread of "who wants what and who is keeping up appearances," then fill in the background.
What are the practical advantages of the Gutenberg edition? The Gutenberg edition is a free electronic text, convenient for full-text searches of character names, chapters and keywords, and easy for copying passages to take notes. It works well alongside a paper Chinese translation, or with the search function to quickly review a character's appearances, reducing the sense of getting lost in a long novel.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

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.