Sarrasine including a foreword by Ásdís Rósa Magnúsdóttir

Abstract

The writer Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) is one of the most renowned French novelists of the nineteenth century. He created a singular portrayal of his own time and of life in the city of Paris in nearly one hundred works of fiction published between 1829 and 1855. Between 1842 and 1846, Balzac’s ambitious collection of novels was first published under the title La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy). This edition is the only version of the collection over which the author himself had full oversight and control, and it is the version known to his contemporaries.¹ This versatile and highly productive writer sought to unite his writings under a single title, and in La Comédie humaine most of his earlier works found their place, new ones were added, and in his plans for the complete works he outlined stories that remained unwritten.