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Cousin Bette (1846) is considered to be Balzac's last great novel, and a key work in his Human Comedy. Set in the Paris of the 1830s and 1840s, it is a complex tale of the devastating effect of violent jealousy and sexual passion.

A gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, Honor de Balzac's Cousin Bette is translated from the French with an introduction by Marion Ayton Crawford in Penguin Classics.

Cousin Bette (1846) is a novel by French author Honor de Balzac. Part of Balzac's La Com die humaine sequence, the novel is recognized as being the author's last fully-realized work, and features several characters who appear elsewhere throughout his legendary... Read Full Overview

Honore de Balzac "Cousin Bette" is generally considered to be one of the writer's most famous novels, his last great work before his death. It is a classic novel of revenge, passion, and vices. Along with her friend Val?rie, the title character Bette strategizes for the overwhelming... Read Full Overview

Honor? de Balzac was one of France's most important writers in the 19th century, thanks to his seminal La Com?die humaine, a hodgepodge collection of stories and novels that depicts French life after the Napoleonic era from a contemporary standpoint. His writing style also influenced... Read Full Overview

Set in mid-19th-century Paris, Cousin Bette tells the story of an unmarried middle-aged woman who plots the destruction of her extended family. Bette works with Val?rie Marneffe, an unhappily married young lady, to seduce and torment a series of men. One of... Read Full Overview

One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages, then lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as Milords, was driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of middle height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard. Among the Paris crowd,... Read Full Overview