Balzac: Cousin Bette

With its action beginning in 1838, though looking back to the Napoleonic wars, when Baron Hulot was a protégé of the Emperor in his wars, La Cousine Bette, written in a bare two months, and with about a hundred named characters appearing in it, may be regarded as one of Balzac’s best novels. It began as a serial in Le Constitutionnel on October 8, 1846, appeared as a novel in 1847, and then in 1848 was made into volume XVII of the Comédie humaine [Human Comedy], along with Cousin Pons (published 1847). In a volume entitled Les Parents pauvres [Poor Relations], these two were late comers to a program which Balzac had thought complete. The first 35 chapters form a prologue; the second section, up to the end of Chapter 100, deals with the year 1841; and, the third, more episodically, from 1843 down to the beginning of 1847, the action finishing, in fact, one month later than the December 1846 issues when the novel ceased serialization.

We may start with listing some of the representative...