Raymond N. MacKenzie

Jan 15, 2025 | lrb.co.uk | Eric Hazan |David Fernbach |Raymond N. MacKenzie |Honoré de Balzac

In​ 1842, with eight highly productive years of writing still ahead of him, Balzac wrote a preface to his Comédie humaine, which already comprised dozens of books. He defended the morality of the work, and revealed the scale of his ambition – nothing less than the creation of a complete picture of France in his time. As if wanting some credit, he remarked that it ‘was no small task to depict the two or three thousand conspicuous types of a period’.