Honoré de Balzac
An innovative 19th-century French writer who refused to give up
The French writer Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) made an important contribution to the development of the modern novel. He is also an important illustration of the principle that failure can be followed by great success if one refuses to give up.
He was born in Tours, a city on the River Loire about 130 miles southwest of Paris, France. His parents wanted him to become a lawyer, but this idea did not excite Honoré who, from the age of about 19, made up his mind that he was going to be a great writer. To this end he left Tours and headed for Paris.
He would spend the next decade enduring a series of disappointments and considerable poverty. As well as writing he tried his hand at printing and publishing, plus some even less likely ventures such as growing pineapples, but the only result was a steady accumulation of troublesome debt.
His attempts at writing got him absolutely nowhere. He started with a verse tragedy with the title “Cromwell”, which was a failure, as was a string of potboilers that were either slushy, sensational, or both. He had the notion that because writers such as Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper had enjoyed huge success from their historical fiction in English, he could do the same in French. He was wrong —…