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1655 Balzac's Letter's History browse these categories for related items... Directory: Traditional Collectibles: Books: Bindings: History: Pre 1700: item # 1094346 Please refer to our stock # 036A0 when inquiring.
Marcus Trading Antiquarian Books Cambridge MA 02138 617-710-0953. Guest Book $275.00 |
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| HISTORYFine Binding. Bright and Tight. Complete "Fine Condition," Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac's production as an essayist spans his literary lifetime. Reflections on politics, literature, religion, and manners are found in all of his writings: letters, treatises (e.g. Le Prince [1631; The Prince]), discourses (e.g. La Harangue célèbre faite à la Reyne sur sa Régence [1641; The famous harangue made to the Queen on her Regency]). It was especially in his letters that his readers found his judgments most compelling, and it is because of the correspondence that literary historians have acknowledged Balzac as a definitive master of French prose. In the first half of the 17th century, he demonstrated to members of the literary and privileged social milieu how to write eloquent, forceful, and pleasing French. Balzac's letters launched his literary career. From the beginning, his letters circulated in aristocratic homes and salons, where they were avidly read. They provoked admiration (Richelieu early encouraged Balzac to continue in this vein) and quarrels, for Balzac ridiculed the authority of the entrenched humanists at the Sorbonne. His criticism of pedantry constituted one of the first outbreaks of the Battle of the Ancients and the Moderns, destined to rage in the 1680s. The success and notoriety of his letters prompted Balzac to publish collections of them, the most famous being the Premières letters (First letters) of 1624 and 1627. Letters appeared in diverse publications throughout his lifetime, and before the end of his life, Balzac had been preparing a new collection, published posthumously as Les Entretiens (1657; The conversations). Balzac spent most of his adult life in solitary retirement in the countryside of the Charente , nursing a frail body, removed from the exhausting Parisian circles, and writing letters to influential men of politics, to literary friends and foes, and to intimates. He hoped that the success of these letters would earn him a brilliant position, where he could make a life for himself. In hindsight, it seems clear that because The Prince (Balzac's apology for Richelieu and Louis XIII's political program for the French state) failed to clinch the Cardinal's patronage, Balzac's aspirations were not to be realized; he had been passed over. However, after the treatise's disappointing reception in 1631, Balzac continued to write, suggesting that he never really gave up hope for a brilliant appointment on the basis of his literary accomplishments Fine binding, “Fine Condition," Contents in Very Good bright and tight condition. Nothing missing, No defects of any type | |||||||||||||||
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