La Comédie humaine is Honoré de Balzac's 1829–48 multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration (1815–30) and the July Monarchy (1830–48).
1901 edition of The Works of Honoré de Balzac, including the entire Comédie humaine
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.
Revised detail of daguerreotype taken in 1842
Vendôme Oratory School – engraving by Armand Queyroy
Drawing of Balzac in the mid-1820s, attributed to Achille Devéria
Laure Junot, Duchess of Abrantès