A Bachelor's Establishment
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: N/A
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Beneath the gilded surface of post-Napoleonic French society, obsession and ruin lurk in the most respectable drawing rooms — and Honoré de Balzac knew exactly where to look. A Bachelor's Establishment (also known as La Rabouilleuse) chronicles the story of the Bridau family, whose fortunes are slowly devoured by the dissolute Philippe Bridau and the scheming ne'er-do-well Max Gilet, as they battle for control of a wealthy provincial inheritance in the Berry region of France. A searing portrait of greed, manipulation, and moral decay, the novel unfolds with Balzac's trademark precision, mapping the social and financial currents that determined a person's fate in early 19th-century France. Part of his monumental La Comédie Humaine sequence, this work stands as one of Balzac's most psychologically acute achievements, presenting a cast of characters whose appetites and weaknesses illuminate the darker mechanisms of bourgeois ambition. His narrative style — at once forensic and compassionate — dissects human motivation with the authority of a scientist and the passion of a moralist. This edition, illustrated by Phyllis Illiani and introduced by Sir Duff Cooper, adds a further layer of cultural richness to a novel that continues to ask whether virtue can ever truly triumph over vice.
Author: Honoré De Balzac
Format: Hardback
Published: 1951, George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd
Genre: Classic fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: N/A
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Beneath the gilded surface of post-Napoleonic French society, obsession and ruin lurk in the most respectable drawing rooms — and Honoré de Balzac knew exactly where to look. A Bachelor's Establishment (also known as La Rabouilleuse) chronicles the story of the Bridau family, whose fortunes are slowly devoured by the dissolute Philippe Bridau and the scheming ne'er-do-well Max Gilet, as they battle for control of a wealthy provincial inheritance in the Berry region of France. A searing portrait of greed, manipulation, and moral decay, the novel unfolds with Balzac's trademark precision, mapping the social and financial currents that determined a person's fate in early 19th-century France. Part of his monumental La Comédie Humaine sequence, this work stands as one of Balzac's most psychologically acute achievements, presenting a cast of characters whose appetites and weaknesses illuminate the darker mechanisms of bourgeois ambition. His narrative style — at once forensic and compassionate — dissects human motivation with the authority of a scientist and the passion of a moralist. This edition, illustrated by Phyllis Illiani and introduced by Sir Duff Cooper, adds a further layer of cultural richness to a novel that continues to ask whether virtue can ever truly triumph over vice.