Books/Writings
Honoré de Balzac
1799 – 1850
French

Novelist and prodigy of literature. He wrote incessantly and indefatigably, producing as many as four novels a year. His statue by Rodin expresses this obsessive, larger-than-life literary figure who put his art above everything else and would not be stopped by poverty or debt.

Contemporaries
1840–1902Émile Zola
1802–1898Charles Villiers
1844–1896Paul Verlaine
1828–1905Jules Verne
1805–1859Alexis de Tocqueville
1767–1820Jean Tallien
1754–1838Charles Talleyrand
1828–1893Hippolyte Taine
1839–1907Sully-Prudhomme
1783–1842Stendhal
1847–1922Georges Sorel
1748–1836Emmanuel Sieyes
1804–1876George Sand
1804–1869Charles Sainte-Beuve
1760–1825Claude Saint-Simon
1740–1814Marquis de Sade
1777–1849Julie Récamier
1823–1892Ernest Renan
1809–1865Pierre Proudhon
1732–1804Jacques Necker
1769–1821Napoleon I
1822–1861Henri Murger
1801–1881Paul Littré
1744–1829Jean Lamarck
1757–1834Marie-Joseph Lafayette
1827–1912Père Hyacinthe
1802–1885Victor Hugo
1816–1882Joseph Gobineau
1848–1903Paul Gauguin
1772–1837Charles Fourier
1821–1880Gustave Flaubert
1809–1871Charles Delescluze
1808–1879Honoré Daumier
1768–1848François Chateaubriand
1755–1826Jean Brillat-Savarin
1824–1880Paul Broca
1809–1852Louis Braille
1802–1887Jean-Baptiste Boussingault
1805–1881Auguste Blanqui
1811–1882Louis Blanc
1753–1809Jean Pierre Blanchard
1771–1802Xavier Bichat
1748–1822Claude Berthollet
1844–1879St. Bernadette of Lourdes
1732–1799Pierre Beaumarchais
1821–1867Charles Baudelaire
1755–1829Paul Barras
1727–1806Michel Adanson